


The Pendant

by sparklingice



Series: Jade-verse [2]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: (not in the BDSM way), Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Adventure, Alien Biology, Alien Character(s), Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Culture, Alien Jensen Ackles, Alien Mythology/Religion, Alien/Human Relationships, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Being Lost, Dominant Jensen, Established Relationship, First Dates, Future, Human Jared Padalecki, Hurt Jensen Ackles, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Sorry, Jewelry, Language Barrier, Light Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Older Jared Padalecki, POV Jared Padalecki, POV Jensen Ackles, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Science Fiction, Slurs, Xenophobia, Young Jensen Ackles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2020-10-12 21:40:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20571326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklingice/pseuds/sparklingice
Summary: Five months after starting their new life together, Jared and Jensen are battling the last of their remaining demons. It's time to let go of the past and embrace a brighter future. But when Jared receives an offer to return to Saxet-d, the pressure around Jensen rises and the doubtful thought doesn't leave him alone - what if Jared's decision depends on his own?"None of the Old Books said the Other World would be this cold and horrendous. Jensen can't find the forest anywhere, can't see leaves or hear the familiar song of life from Jared's window. It's a dead world pretending to be alive."DISCONTINUED. Sorry to all of you who were waiting and thank you for the support!(Sequel to Beware of the Jade God)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! :)  
I'm happy to announce that here it is, the sequel of [Beware of the Jade God](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16993755/chapters/39948333). If you haven't read the first part, please do before diving into this one.
> 
> After so long, we'll finally hear Jensen's POV! His language will be in a different font than the rest of the text, as usual. It should be clear in context, but just to make sure, Tlatoani is JDM as Jensen calls him.
> 
> I wanted to wait a few more weeks before posting the first chapter, but I couldn't resist anymore. Especially since I got this super cute commission from [Kamidiox](https://www.deviantart.com/kamidiox) to illustrate the story. :) I'll try to update as soon as I can. 
> 
> Enjoy this part and tell me what you think after! ;)

None of the Old Books said the Other World would be this cold and horrendous. Jensen can't find the forest anywhere, can't see leaves or hear the familiar song of life from Jared's window. The streets of this strange city stretch out like untamed beasts from the time before the First Dance, rise so high that every way you look, their ends fade into the distance. They glow warm orange if he watches them with his night eye, but the air that hits his face outside is cool and dry as the flesh of a branch hit by lightning. A dead world pretending to be alive.

He wonders if that's what he is too. A feather that doesn't burn in the funeral fire, but it's in the flames nonetheless. The gods didn't accept his sacrifice, he thinks, or maybe he went lost on the Way, sailed past his island of wonders in the darkest ocean, the one Jared calls _Space._ If he believes in the priests' word, this is where souls-who-don't-follow come, who doubt and don't deserve to go on or join the gods.

But Tlatoani always told Jensen never to trust a person in grey robes, and Jensen loved Tlatoani more than anyone in this life, so he stays hopeful and brave to honour his memory, all that's left behind. Perhaps it's Jared who's right, and this is the same world, just farther from home than anyone has ever dared sail. It might be true that he didn't die in the Dance.

"Who knows?" Jensen mumbles into his hand, still watching the mechanic buzz that fills the air outside.

The Old Books never said buildings can be this high without reaching the Sun herself and earning her wrath. Jared told him this place is called _New Earth Capital, _a city where cars fly and people speak as many different tongues as there are colours on a meadow. Jensen knows what _new _means, but not _Earth Capital,_ and he doesn't understand how all this can be new when it's so, so big that it couldn't have been built in the last hundred quincenas, or even a hundred years.

He wants to ask Jared how they made foundations strong enough to support houses this tall, but Jared doesn't yet see he understands architecture better than a child, and it frustrates Jensen when he feels he's denied an honest answer. He's not a hatchling, and he's smart for his age - the priests gave them good education on the matters of the mind in the Pebble House. Jared's science may be different or even better, but Jensen doesn't need it explained with colourful pictures and nature words. Yes, he sometimes says things very simply because he forgets a new word in that halting tongue of Jared's, but he's afraid Jared might assume he's thinking on that level too and it's annoying. He doesn't want to seem dumb.

Therefore, he decided to master the device running in every wall of Jared's room called _The Computer. _Jensen is good at observing, and he had almost ten quincenas to see how Jared handled life here, or five _months, _if he wants to use Jared’s words. He learnt how Jared labelled time, knows that this is the _month _named _July, _the warmest in the hot season they call _summer. _They didn’t really have seasons back home, so it’s difficult for him to estimate how much difference in temperature that meant, but he’s already dreading the months that are supposed to be much colder than this.

It was hard to get used to all the things Jared uses, _replicators _and _turbolifts_ and _comms,_ but Jensen’s an excellent student, and he can stay home alone now for a few hours at a time. He learnt how to _call _Jared if he's in trouble.

He'll be fine outside too, he tells himself.

They taught him to be a good listener in the Pebble House. If he didn't want to get punished, he had to sit through every reading of the Books and sing along with the priests. He learnt to pretend he had nothing to say, because it was always better to be smarter than they knew. He's still good at taking the world in without words, and he doesn't mind if Jared's friends talk like he isn't there. It's better to know more than they think he does. So neither Jared, nor his friends have any idea just how much Jensen can actually do, and they don’t know how far he’s willing to go in order to show he’s worthy of being treated as an equal.

No matter what, he’ll make Jared see he is good enough.

"Computer.” He starts, leaving his comfy chair by the window in favour of staring at the bare wall. “Show me where Jared wind."

With his night eye, he can see how electricity circles back and forth under the surface as if it is confused.

"Instructions unclear." Cracks the Computer at last and offers a square panel with a button, _H-E-L-P._

Jensen’s reading and writing skills in this weird tongue are shaky at best, but that’s one of the first words Jared taught him to use and he would recognise it anywhere. He rolls his eyes. For the love of the Sun, how was the past tense of the word… He always messes up the pronunciation. Wined? Ugh, no, that's stupid. Wend? Went!

"Show me where Jared went."

Once again, he follows the circuit as much as he can, although it’s nothing but a flash of orange this time because the information comes through immediately. “Raoul Wandelaar University, Great Hall, Level Five. His graduation ceremony.”

Jensen nods to tell the device he understood. _Level Five _means the height, and he knows the university, Jared takes him there four times every quincena - it's a school for those who aren't priests, warriors or healers. A school for scientists who don't care for religion. If only they had something like that back home… They would have been able to fly a long time ago.

"Search gra-du-ation ceremony."

Jared didn't tell him where he went and why, he just rolled out of bed, got dressed in something shiny and black, and kissed Jensen's forehead. "Are we okay?" He asked in Jensen's tongue and Jensen said yes, but they really aren't. They had a fight. A big one. It left Jensen's throat sore and his feathers bristling and sharp, but he isn't even sure now if he was right. He wants to make amends.

Although he wishes Jared invited him to his _graduation ceremony,_ he didn't, maybe because he was too angry, so Jensen has to get there on his own and surprise him now. In the pictures The Computer is showing him it looks like a time for celebration, and mates should be together for those, he figures, even if their relationship isn't going too well. Jensen wants to make things better so much - he has to prove he's good enough. That he can live in this city without constant help, that he can carry out his own plans and act independently, without clinging to Jared for aid. He'll prove it.

He will.

"Computer. Tell me how to visit the grad… uh, the ceremony."

Jensen doesn't want to fear anything connected to his mate, but there are so many that he does. He fears this city and the monster-people it houses, those who walk around with tentacle-arms or beady saucer-eyes, he fears Jared's family and the judgement in his mother's gaze, and most importantly, he fears Alicia the _Doctor _and her equipment, and the _robot_ that says Jensen's body is going to change, should become one or the other after the organ they put back into his neck starts to function again.

Which one does Jared want? He doesn't say. Jensen asks and the answer isn't straight, it's said in the low voice that meant to keep him calm, it's indifference. But Jared should have a preference, everyone has one, right? It should be obvious. Jared can't change, he's male and unable to carry eggs. So someone has to. It's just… Jensen doesn't want to. He feels male, always wanted to be male, be just like Tlatoani, a great warrior admired for his strength.

He doesn't want to carry, but someone must, so he tried to bring new people into their mateship, asked Alicia and showed her his willingness with a _kiss _on her cheek. She laughed and pushed Jensen away. _"Are you trying to make Jared jealous?" _She asked. _Jealous. _Jensen doesn't understand. It would be beneficial for all of them - companionship and satisfaction in their roles. Jensen could stay male, and Jared wouldn't have to feel bad about his inability to lay eggs.

But yesterday, when he told Jared what he did, Jared told him not to try that anymore. "I only want the two of us, nobody else." He said, so that must mean he wants Jensen to bear his hatchlings. Jensen asked him if that was true, and then they argued, fought about everything and truly nothing until Jared's face was red and damp, and The Computer offered to adjust their bed into two separate nests.

It hurt so much that Jared's answer wasn't no.

"What do I do?" Jensen sighs as he tries to make sense of the projection The Computer gives him of the optimal route to the ceremony.

It's hard to get used to making decisions. Their two quincenas of freedom in the jungle felt good, like floating in a lake and soaking up the sunshine, the best of both gods. But this endless, unlimited liberty comes with questions that haven't even occurred to him before. He wasn't supposed to have this choice or have a mate to consider for that matter. It must be so annoying that he doesn't just give in, but he's a man. Not a mother. He's the Jade God, a part of him, the force behind all the strength in nature, how could he be the nurturing one in their mateship?

"Shall I call for taxi service, Sir?"

Jensen doesn't trust _taxis. _They don't even have drivers. Once when Jared took him to the private garden by the university, their car malfunctioned and they had to get out at a crowded place, the _Resto District_ on Level Four. Hundreds of weird people eating disgusting food together, what a nightmare. So many overwhelming smells.

Jared led them away from there and to the _train, _and they went up on that. It was nice. Just enough strangers that Jensen could observe them, but not so many that he suffocated. "We avoid these on purpose." Jared grumbled and tightened his hold on Jensen's hand, as if he was afraid he would run away through the doors. "They are always filthy." 

But Jensen didn't see much dirt, and the people across the aisle smiled at him when he looked up. He liked the train, that one time he took it, and he feels like he could follow its route much better than a flying car's. It would be easier to come back if he needed to.

"No taxi, Computer." He decides. "Tell me where I find the train."

* * *

Getting through doors is a challenge here. Without handles, keys or keyholes, only automatic sliding screens, Jensen can't even guess what he needs to break out of a room. In the _hospital, _Alicia said she wouldn't risk him bribing the _nurse robot, _so she uses something that scans her eyes and keeps the door firmly shut unless there's an emergency. Short of causing a fire, he hasn't yet figured out how to unlock that one.

It's the Sun's mercy that Jared is much sloppier with his safety measures.

He gave Jensen a mating stone two months ago, a magical pendant with glowing blue lines that remind Jensen of the _spacesuit _Jared wore the day they met. They were cuddling in the egg-chair after another long day at the hospital when he put it into Jensen's palm.

"So that you know you're not alone." He said, and the medal promptly became Jensen's favourite possession to date.

It's the most beautiful stone he has ever seen. Nobody else in the world has such a pendant, Jensen's sure - it's not only a tiny computer that can make _calls _and record _holographic _footage, but it lights up forming words written in Jensen's tongue. He hasn't worked out the mechanism yet, but it's brilliant, and he can't believe Jared used the writing samples he asked for to make this. Jensen thought it was for his _thesis._

It makes him feel a little bad that he's using this precious gift to break out, but it's for a good cause, Jared will understand. He likes surprises, he'll be happy.

_"Alicia will be here in half an hour." _Jared says in the holographic video Jensen sneakily took of him this morning. "Would you please talk to her about what we… discussed last night?"

Jensen remembers that he nodded, and he sees the sad smile on video-Jared's face as he turns to the entrance. This is it - the key he needs to open that door, the password. It's in another tongue that Jared knows, and he speaks dozens of them, incomprehensible, alien sounds. The only way Jensen can crack the locking mechanism with it is playing it loud enough to fool the door.

_"Je partirai." _Video-Jared says, and Jensen holds his pendant as close to where he thinks the lock is as he can manage._ "Vois-tu, je sais que tu m’attends."_

The door frame beeps, and, to Jensen's delight, the screen swishes open to reveal the long, bright hallway to the turbolifts.

"Did you watch me, Computer?" Jensen grins back into the empty room, arching his eyebrows smugly. Jared will be stunned! And perhaps he won't bother locking it next time. It would make Jensen feel less like he has done something bad when Jared goes to run errands alone.

It's not that he really minds, it's just… They all tell him _"you're free, Jen, you can do whatever you want", _but in some ways, he's just as limited as he's been before. Being liberated from the priests only to become confined to a single room and someone else's schedule hasn't brought him contentment. And he doesn't know what that means, to do whatever he wants. There's a pang in his stomach when he thinks it's all over, that his Dance has been done and the future is an open field with no end in sight. How does one handle that, coming out of a crevice in a canyon?

He thought he would know what to do next, or at least he wouldn't have to think about it since he'd be an integrated part of something bigger and divine. But this world has no answers, just questions upon mysteries and uncertainty. What is his purpose here? Making a family? But he can't do that if he stays male. Is that his final Sacrifice in this circle?

Maybe it is, and only then will he reach the god his soul belongs to. Which means he should do the stages again, earn the powers here as well. He did Death when Jared first took him to the Botanical Garden, then Wind and Rain when they rode the _monorail_ to the hills of _High Park_ and Jared let him dance under the thunder until people began to laugh. Now, he has a pendant. What will Forest get him?

And where will he do it without trees? He'll have to ask Jared after he surprised him at the ceremony.

"Make winter spice cookies." He tells the replicator that cooks things without ingredients. It's such a marvellous invention. Does it build food from the little particles every matter is made of?

Jared told him _ginger cookies_ are for the Solstice fest, but the graduation ceremony is for celebration anyway, Jensen is sure it's justified if he stacks a few away in his coat. He and Jared can go to the Botanical Garden and eat them sitting in the grass. It will be so nice. There's natural sunshine up there, and he won't need more than one layer because the wind isn't as bad in _The Acropolis_ as it is on Level Three.

"See you later, Computer." He smiles, cookies safely packed away, and strolls through the door. He doesn't know how to lock it behind himself, but when he says _'close', _the screen slides into place, so he hopes no one gets the idea to look around inside. He wants this day to be one of the best!

* * *

He braves the turbolift because two of their male neighbours have just stepped in it, and he trusts their strength to save him if the tiny contraption gets stuck or refuses to open. It also has the advantage that he doesn't need to struggle with the voice command, because they are going to the entrance as well.

"Jensen, my man." One of the guys exclaims and extends his right fist as they start speeding downwards. Jensen startles but obediently reaches under it, palm up, to accept the thing he must be hiding in his grip.

He smiles. "Nice to meet you, Mike."

"Right." Mike snickers and bumps his fist into Jensen's hand. His friend grins down at his feet. What does that mean? "You know, we only say that _the first time_ we meet someone."

Jensen bites his lip. He didn't know that! He thought it was a sentence to greet people you don't know well enough to touch their shoulders. "I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it." Mike flaps his hand in the air, then puts it on his hip and tilts his head to the side. Jensen knows most times humans don't use the same gestures his people do, but he barely keeps from laughing at what this unintentionally implies. It might as well be a proclamation that one is willing to carry for the other. "So, you and the big boy, what's up?"

"Sunshine City?" Jensen frowns back. He hopes he said the name of Level Four right.

"No, I mean, Jared got his degree, right? Finished?"

"Yes." Jensen nods, then remembers what Jared said about trying to give more than one-word answers to questions. "I helped with his thesis."

Mike and his friend look impressed. "Have you found a new place yet?

"New place?"

"Yeah." Mike's friend chimes in just as the turbolift slows to a stop and the tube of the cabin slides open. "You'll have to move out before the next batch of freshers arrive."

Jensen hurries to get out before he gets stuck inside. His mind is racing to make sense of all this. Moving out? Jared hasn't really said anything about that. He said he received an offer to… Did he say yes? He couldn't have. Or could he? There must be things he doesn't share, thinking that Jensen wouldn't comprehend them.

"I don't - This is a good room -"

"Sorry, we didn't mean to confuse you." Mike puts a hand on his shoulder, but Jensen squirms away from it after a second. It's too close to his feathers, too intimate. There's an awkward pause before Mike recovers enough to pick the conversation up again. "Where are you going alone, by the way?"

"To surprise Jared. At his graduation ceremony."

"Nice of you." Mike's friend says.

Jensen's feathers puff up under the praise. Yes, he's nice and brave enough to do this for his mate. "I will use the train."

"Oh, cool." Mike smiles, but he seems to contemplate something for a moment, maybe even considers helping Jensen get there himself. The refusal is in Jensen's throat already, because this is _his _plan and his alone, but thankfully Mike decides not to take the chaperone role after all. "Take the yellow one, all right? And get off at the Curie Centre."

"All right." Jensen mumbles. He knows that the Centre is big and looks like dozens of house-sized globes connected by _skyways. _Jared told him it symbolizes one particle of the material that ruined most of the place called _Old Earth,_ where humans lived before. The building is meant to be imposing to remind people of the strength of that destruction. It would be hard to miss it. "Thank you, Mike."

"See you later, pal." Mike nods, and with one last long look, he and his friend walk away towards the exit.

* * *

It's bright and sunny outside, but the golden morning light doesn't fool Jensen's senses. It's just an illusion. He doesn't feel the pleasant sting real sunshine gives his cheeks, and as soon as he steps into the shade, the elusive warmth fades away from his skin. No matter how insistent Jared is that the rulers of this city do their best to direct rays of natural light down from the top, they both know that most of what they get on this level is artificial.

It surprised him that Alicia didn't come. As far as he knows, one hour means that the row of numbers he can't read changes to one number and two or three ellipses. After Jared left, he paid careful attention to the digits above the _main panel,_ and he waited a full hour because he didn't know how to measure half of that. But the Doctor didn't come. Was it because Jensen invited her into their mateship? Was she offended to get an offer from someone as defective for mating as Jensen is?

It makes him feel so awful. He didn't mean to upset anyone.

The streets of this level have shimmering nets in the middle. _Force fields, _Jared said. So that things don't fall to the places way down under. These force fields fill the gaps between the walkways around buildings and the skyways connecting each house with its neighbours. They remind Jensen of branches and tree-walking, and how they usually do that when the terrain under the canopies is guarded by dangerous shock-bushes and metal-eating snails. He wonders what exactly is on the ground here that even people with flying cars prefer to avoid.

He feels excited and a little scared as he crosses the street and leaves their house behind, but it gives him a sense of power at the same time. He can do this. He doesn't need help. Even if Jared accepts the offer his leaders gave him to go back to Jensen's home with a scientist group, he could survive alone, every minute out here without an incident proves that.

He can do this, but he still hopes that Jared doesn’t want to leave him. It's doubtful that he could bear the sorrow if Jared went and discarded him for someone else from his world. He told Jensen that if he says yes, Jensen will have to stay with Jeff for as long as the mission lasts. Because he is a lingering soul, a _ghost_ \- nonexistent in the eyes of Jared's people until he's taken back to the place of his death. Then, they will see and force him to stay there. That's why he can't go back even if Jared does.

"Help… Please, help me…" He hears from the corner of a skyway that bridges the distance to the building Jared called _The Worm. _Jensen likes that one. It's tubular and shiny, with large ornaments that protrude, then draw back in a rippling pattern, and it has something named an _algae pavilion_ in front of it to make fresh air. "Help, my wound is infected…"

There's a bearded man sitting by the railing, reaching for other pedestrians who give him a wide berth. His clothes are ill-fitting and they flicker as though the light in them has been broken. There's a gash on his forearm that oozes that strange red human blood. Jensen feels sick from his smell, but he doesn't know what to do. Even if the man stinks like the waste of an ant, he can't just leave him to die!

"Help?" He asks meekly, inching a little closer. Not following everyone else makes him feel shy, since he doesn't really know the customs that well, but he never fit in even with his own people, so he decides not to care.

"Just a few credits, young man, just to get this regenerated, it isn't much." As he sees Jensen approach, the man raises a box with a scanner on it.

Jensen's familiar with scanners - Jared showed him several times that in this city, you don't pay with pebbles, but by pressing your fingertip to one of these. Then, your special accessory will project a screen where you choose how many _credits_ you want to give from your account. Jared uses a wristband, but he hasn't given one to Jensen yet because they still need to make an account for him. All Jensen has is a card with so-called _free credits_ for emergencies. Jared said he doesn't need his fingertip or an account to spend them, but it's only a small amount. He's certain a healer would ask for more.

"I'm sorry." Jensen says, not quite sure how to explain all this.

He finds it cruel that none of the other citizens stop to save the man's arm. If Jensen was cold-hearted like that, Jared wouldn't have survived a single day in the jungle. Who knows what helping this stranger would bring him? Maybe he could guide Jensen to the right train.

"Put it on your arm." He tells the man and gives him a vial.

It's his healing saliva. Jared told him he can't lick anyone on the streets, because most humans are disgusted by that sort of thing and there might be things on their bodies that could make Jensen sick. Licking is only between mates, Jared said, looking pained by the topic. He often does when the question of appropriate touches comes up. Perhaps he's bothered that Jensen didn't have any experience when they became mates. Not that anyone would blame him for his dissatisfaction - it's quite unusual, even for a jade boy, to reach Jensen's age without having sex. It's evident that Jared didn't get the best deal with this relationship. Saddened by yet another shortcoming, Jensen apologised for his ignorance of human rules, but it was hard to comply, because the humans in their building got themselves hurt all the time and not healing them made him feel guilty. So, he asked for Alicia’s help.

He's been carrying this small amount of saliva with himself since then, in his coat. "It is good for wounds."

The man grins. His discolored bluish teeth glisten in the light. "You have a good soul."

How could he know? Quetzalitzli is a powerful and violent god, he isn't good. Not in the way the Sun is. Why would anyone say Jensen is then? Even if they didn't know about Jensen's gods, they should feel it, shouldn't they?

He would ask what the man meant, but he's afraid he'll be late for Jared's ceremony, and he wouldn't miss that for the world. "Can you show the yellow train? Where?"

"Yellow?"

"Yellow to the Acro-polis."

"The police? That way, you'll see it, son, just a few minutes that way." The man exclaims and waves both his arms in the direction of a haven for flying cars.

Jensen thought he had to cross to the other side, but he's glad he doesn't have to after all. He's used to great heights and wobbly branches, but the huge skyways between these bottomless towers scare him. As does the whistling, raging wind that blows icy chills over every patch of uncovered skin he has. Jared was meaning to buy him something called _earmuffs, _but in the warmth of their home, they always forgot.

"Thank you, beard man." Jensen shows the man three fingers and starts walking again, daydreaming.

He remembers the first time Jared walked with him around the_ block. _They stopped by a soft food shop called a _vintage bakery_ filled with baskets of the spongy white buns humans love. It was warm inside, and the air smelled of strange spices that Jensen could separate by sensation but not name. It's still one of his most dreamlike experiences in this vast world. Jared bought him something that had grains of salt on the outside and a sweet, pink goo on the inside. It was exotic and delicious, a mix of flavours and textures that Jensen wanted to get fat from. None of the jungle's fruits would be able to compete. He couldn't eat it properly though, and the sticky filling covered the fingers of his right hand by the time they got home. It made Jared smile. He glanced around the hallway, then took Jensen by the wrist and licked the syrup off his thumb. Gods, that felt so good. Who knew that the skin around his hooks was so sensitive?

He hopes that they can buy another salty-sweet bun on the way back today.

"A portrait for ten credits, ten credits, ladies and gentlemen, don't miss out on our limited deal!" A short man dressed in a shirt made of screens jumps in front of Jensen and waves his arms around. The devices on his shoulders display shapes that Jensen thinks are supposed to be stars. He suspects it's the symbol of New Earth's people because he can see them all the time.

"Oh, you're stunningly beautiful, sir, I will paint your profile for a discount price if you sit here for a minute." The man pulls him aside by the elbow to a contraption with a white screen in the middle. His shirt projects samples of his work between them so that he can point at the pictures as he rambles on. "Fifty credits and I can do any style you want, digital, vintage oil painting, 3D texture portrait or synesthetic. The realistic glow is free of charge. Only fifty credits for the full experience today."

Jensen feels overwhelmed, because no one has ever approached him like this with Jared by his side and back home it simply wasn't something people did. He gets it that the man is trying to sell him bad quality art, but it's not easy to find a polite way of saying no. "I don't have many credits."

"No problem, my friend, I accept all kinds of valuables, and you have such a nice pendant there, is it not sapphire by any chance?"

"I don't understand."

"A portrait for your necklace, how d'you like the sound of that?" The man grins, but when Jensen remains clueless, he sighs and extends a hand. "Just give me that necklace."

Jensen's fist closes around his pendant immediately when he realizes the guy's intent. No, even if the Moons never rise again! He takes a protective step back. He doesn't share what's dear to him well. "It is mine. It's my mating stone. You can't have it."

All traces of the ingenuine smile is gone from the man's face as he spits at the pavement. He's crazy, wasting saliva like that. "Fucking xeno-migrants, never a fucking dime on them. Freeloaders."

Jensen doesn't understand why he got that angry. He gets that his necklace is beautiful, but that shouldn't warrant this anger. He hates when someone loses their temper and he can't figure out the cause. It scares him. His father and the priests always locked him up alone when he stepped out of his circle and did something he wasn't supposed to. No suffering is worse than utter loneliness. He has to reassure himself that as long as he shows Jared he's worthy of staying in this Other World, he will never experience that torturous solitude again.

* * *

"Yellow train, yellow train." Jensen mutters to remind himself as he enters the station the bearded man pointed out to him.

He can see two yellow lines going in opposite directions. Which one is it? He can't read the flashing, moving orange signs well enough. The drawings Jared calls letters don't stand in the right order in his head. When Jared teaches him, he always writes in the shape of waves to get Jensen's eyes used to the left-to-right reading motion without taking all the curves away at once. But the city isn't so considerate. This harsh, discontinuous writing requires a good bit of Jensen's concentration, and he's already tired.

_F-O-O-D._ He knows this one, it's the second word Jared taught him and the first they celebrated with a few good kisses to Jensen's neck. His mate sure knows how to motivate him, Jensen was proud to realize that. _S-E-X S-H-O-P._ That's probably a place where they sell S-E-X, only the Sky knows what that is. But he didn't come here for shopping._ C-E-N-T-R-E._ Centre? It must be the Curie Centre, right?

"You had better rub noses with me after this, Jay." He grumbles as he walks up to the electronic gates that scan people's eyes. The first time they went through one of these, Jared hugged him for a long, long time and said that Chad is the best friend who ever lived. It must have had something to do with the way Jensen got his new name in the Botanical Garden.

The gate lets him through without trouble, but he has to stop and back away from the train because there are too many people buzzing around and they are so, so strange and loud. He can't breathe. The crowd seems to close in around him. Dance! Dance! Dance! He hears them chant, and the blood pounding in his ears sounds like drumbeat. Sacrifice! Someone walks past him and his face is dead and sunken, he's Miquitzli's soldier, he'll end up in the pile and Jensen's bare feet will slip on his blood. Kill! Jensen's stomach flares up with a pain vicious enough to make him bend over. Is he still there?

_"You're safe."_ A gentle voice blows through the fog in his mind like a breeze. There's a moving tree next to him that pets his hair and vibrates with a dull hum that helps Jensen forget the pain. He extends a hand and branch-fingers twine between his knuckles.

_"You're good." _The being touches his forehead with its palm, and Jensen's fear drains away. Only one person used to reassure him like this before he decided to give Jared everything.

"Tlatoani?" He whispers, heart longing for more of the sensation he's been missing ever since he left his village all those quincenas ago. If he's seeing the shadow-world, the world of souls who passed, could it be _him?_ Perhaps Jensen is still in the jungle and his Dance never happened.

_"No. You're here." _The being sounds taken aback, and the remains of Jensen's visions disappear. The tree-person who looked into his mind is actually purple and has wide scales instead of leaves on its head. It has wet, ethereal white eyes. Its clothes look like the grey uniforms Jared told him to stay away from. It's a soldier. "Where did you come from? Did you lose your group?"

"Epsilon Eridani." Jensen recites the answer Jared drilled into his head while he backs away as fast as he can. He shouldn't let the _police_ soldiers catch him, he's been told. This isn't his home, and they might take him away. Then he would lose Jared too.

The closest train's doors are open, so he runs inside, holding his gaze on the ground and his hooks pressed into his palms to pray that this is the one that transports people to the Acropolis. The train moves and the tree-soldier disappears from view.

* * *

He doesn't recognise the districts the train takes him through. People come and go, but he just waits there patiently, watching out for the Curie Centre and the University. He hopes he'll get there in time to see Jared and clap for him like a proper human celebrates. The changing buildings don't worry him - Chad once took him out when Jared was busy studying and they went to a place where people drank _potassium vodka_ and placed bets on disgusting videos. The street of that place looked similarly dark and covered by litter.

The shrinking light outside makes him feel a bit cold though, so he fastens the magnets of his coat together and rubs at the patch on his chest. As far as he knows, it generates heat by converting the energy his moving hand radiates. It's such brilliant technology. Just like the _holo-ads. _They are projected from buildings and move around in their blue, transparent glow, giant artificial creatures. Many of them are eyes, nothing but round eyes and lashes, and they scare Jensen sick at times. They try to get people to buy beauty products.

"Because the eyes are mirrors to the soul." Jared explained one day. "The only part of _robots_ we can't make to look real."

Jensen wonders what Jared thinks when he sees Jensen's eyes. Are they too different? Too ugly and not-human? Sometimes he worries that his eyes are the reason why Jared doesn't have sex with him. He can't wait to see if that changes today or not. Rejection bothers him, but he doesn't say he's hurt. There are many things he doesn't say, like these fear attacks he only has when Jared isn't there to hook him to the present and the memories of his Dance can take over again. But why should he complain? He's treated well, with love and kindness, and that's all he needs.

The train's lingering at a stop called _Chutes _when two human boys with clothes covering their mouths and burn scars on their hands step in, and every remaining passenger springs to escape through the doors. Jensen is hit by instinctual, blind panic, and he tries to run after them too, but the more muscular guy pins him to the rail.

"Credits here, now." He barks, thrusting his scanner against Jensen's chest hard. Something cracks. It hurts. "Move your fucking fingers!"

The mask and his aggressive voice distort the words so much that Jensen doesn't understand. He puts his hands together to signal he's unarmed and doesn't want to fight, but the man slaps them away and raises a black rod to press it right against Jensen's temple.

"Give me your credits, you fucking xeno!"

His partner checks Jensen's clothes, but there's nothing to find but the cookies and the _free credits _card. "Shit, what if he's a tourist?"

"Then he's dead."

Dead. Dead. Jensen knows what they mean by that. But he hasn't even finished Forest, he needs to do nine more stages. He tears up. "N-No account."

The first man groans and pushes the black rod harder. "Fuck. Dusko, wipe that card clean then and let's go."

It's probably a weapon in his hand. He’s pressing it to Jensen’s head, too hard, at the wrong spot, and Jensen knows, he can’t… he can’t stay awake. He remembers how they did this before every new tattoo, how he always woke up on a table, but he can't… he can't hold the sleep away. Everything turns blurry and silent, he's falling, drifting in water, and it's so dark… He collapses.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jared's morning of nightmares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello lovelies! I'm so sorry that it took me forever and a day, I was too homesick and anxious to function. I hope you will like this chapter, despite the long wait! :)

Jared's gut feeling tells him he shouldn't leave that morning. It’s guilt, just a wave of unnecessary regret, so he tries to ignore it and start the day with a clean screen. Fighting with Jensen always makes him end up as the bad guy. Why did he order his AI to arrange their bed into two mattresses? It was such a petty way to end the argument.

But Jensen pissed him off last night. He refuses to take anything they tell him literally, doesn't understand that no one is trying to influence his decisions. _I don't care about kids, _Jared told him for the umpteenth time yesterday, but he just kept hissing, _the fact that you can't nurture a child doesn't mean I have to. _It's so frustrating. Why can’t he see that there isn’t hidden purpose or expectation behind every word? It’s bordering on distrust and that fucking hurts. There’s a glitch in their communication, probably since Jensen’s hormone levels fell out of their previous balance, and they seem to be talking past each other nowadays. As if they were arguing in space - without any matter to carry soundwaves, their voices die before they could even reach each other.

Still. The way last night panned out was entirely Jared's fault. He knows Jensen would have found a threesome with Alicia quite normal, more so than the monogamous relationship they have right now, but he can't help it, there's an insecure part of him that boiled at the suggestion. He kept it down and didn't blow up in Jensen's face for _that, _because the poor thing really didn't mean anything bad, but now he knows that his stupid, jealous anger found another outlet anyway. What a disaster.

He doesn't want to carry this today.

"Sorry, baby." He whispers and strokes the cushion of feathers spread out on top of the blanket Jensen pulled up to his shoulders. They grew darker since Alicia restored the damage done to his body, and the new shade, cutting through the beige monotone of the fabric, glitters like an actual gemstone. Jared's _obsessed. _He wants to admire them all day. "I'll make it up to you, all right?"

Jensen must be too sleepy to care about the silly human words Jared mumbles into the too-wide space between them, but he recognises the tone and doesn't seem to appreciate it at six forty in the morning. With a small frown, he drags the blanket over his face and trills. The message isn't nearly as cute as he makes it sound - baby talking to an adult can mean a number of things in his society depending on context, and Jared knows this wasn't meant as loving or cuddly.

"Annoying? Me?" Jared grins and climbs off his own mattress to roll himself all over Jensen's unresisting body. "Lazy." He tries to trill back.

Jensen bursts into chuckles under him. "You sound like you have throat disease."

That's probably the nicest way to describe it.

"Say how bad it really is." Jared prods, propping his chin up on Jensen's shoulder, and Jensen trills again, so irritated that the blanket vibrates under Jared's fingers. He doesn't want to swear, but sometimes, when he's obviously holding it back, Jared pushes him until he does. He needs it, to take another step towards freedom. The High Priest can't dictate his life anymore, doesn't own his body and thoughts, but some of those awful conditioned fears persist. It breaks Jared's heart every time he flinches after saying a "bad word".

"You're an axno." Jensen grumbles, then squirms until his head sticks out from under the covers again. The crease of discomfort between his eyebrows deepens. "Is that what you wanted to hear?" 

"Exactly." Jared laughs and shifts around until he's under the covers too, head pillowed on Jensen's plumage.

This is how he wakes up almost every morning, even though he's the bigger one, the person who's actually home and isn't supposed to need reassurance. He does though. Chad says it's weird, that he might want to cut back on the clinginess, but this way, he can feel it when Jensen relaxes, when he's tense, when he's wrecked by one of those nightmares he can't wake up from on his own. It's their comfort position. He spends several minutes just enjoying it and feeling sorry for himself at the same time like some pathetic idiot.

"Jen. Are we okay?"

He knows the answer, the true one, the moment Jensen's jaw tightens, pressed against his forehead. "Yes."

They really aren't, and they both know it. Something still feels unresolved and straining in his chest, and he wants to make it better, wants to give Jensen the space to think it over. Somewhere between their grief, fear and shock, their love slipped away from mutual understanding to blindness. They have to open their eyes. Jared needs to see what Jensen holds secret. Each of his untold, invisible, misunderstood little thoughts until he realizes where they ricochet off his own frame of reference.

Chad is probably right. He must have been overbearing in the past few months. It just felt logical to spend every minute he could attached to Jensen, to make sure he was safe and healthy, but Jensen's a smart guy. Being all but chained to Jared must have been frustrating for a while now.

It's high time to step back. He figures his graduation ceremony is a good place to start, because crowds can still distress Jensen and - although several guests, like Jared's parents, will only attend through telepresence - it _is _going to be a packed event. Jared almost wishes he didn't have to go either, but according to the university, the brief moment of public acclaim every graduate experiences is more rewarding to the slowly evolving human psyche than the transmissions they tried in the last decade. Besides, his mother booked a lunch at some fancy interplanetary restaurant and he's expected to show up with a degree in his hands. She's going to sit there on the Martian end and push him to accept the government's offer, and they are all going to pretend it would only affect Jared's life and no one else's. Jensen doesn't have to endure that shit.

He has enough on his plate as it is. He never talks about his family or Jeff, says that talking too much about loved ones who passed will bind them to this level of the world and they could get stuck in-between, become "lingering souls". Sometimes, when he doesn't feel well, he thinks he's one of these ghost-like entities too because the gods didn't accept his sacrifice. Those are the days when Jared is afraid, truly fearing that Jensen's going to commit something reckless and irreversible in a misguided attempt to repeat that bloody ritual.

Just thinking about the possibility makes him shudder. He presses his lips to the center of Jensen's forehead for a quick kiss and pets his feathers to soothe himself, along the thick upper layer to the downy fluff at the base, just barely touching the delicate skin they hide. His free hand slips around to Jensen's spine and slides up. "Does it still hurt?"

Jensen lowers his eyes. "Yes."

Alicia can only do so much. Everything she does, what they do, is illegal - they can't ask for more help. She’s not an expert at dealing with unknown sentient species, and she’s alone. Jared’s fretting doesn’t help when she has a body face down and cut open in front of her. With incredible effort, she managed to reconstruct most of the gland that has been so crudely carved out of Jensen before he could lose all his boyish features to his species’ puberty, but something isn’t quite right with the artificially grown parts. They are inflamed and tender, which makes Jensen sensitive as hell. After the surgery, Jared has been trying to prepare himself for the inevitable changes, muscle growth and mood swings, but he didn’t dare consider that something would go wrong. Not wanting to risk another operation, they turned to traditional medicine and put creams on the purpling skin above it, but it’s getting worse every day.

"You don't feel warm enough." Jared sits up with a frown, drawing his hands back. Jensen’s body should be running hotter than his own, but when he asks his AI to do a temperature check, it’s below the average human temperature. Unfortunately, after the past few weeks, they know from experience that this is Jensen’s equivalent of a fever. The pathogens on his planet must hate cold just as much as his species does, so his body is trying to stop the infection by lowering his core temperature. But the cause of this illness might not belong to Saxet-d at all.

It’s Jared’s worst nightmare come true.

"Shit." He swears, reaching for his comm with his hands shaking like particles in a stream of solar wind. Fuck his family’s plans, he won’t leave Jensen like this. He’s going to grab an emergency landing kit from the staff halls on Base Level, they contain extreme weather equipment - that might help holding Jensen’s warmth until Alicia figures something out. “I’m going to run downstairs and get you a special blanket to keep you warm, all right? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Jensen doesn’t seem to understand at all. For a second, he looks terrified, like he did on the big day, when they laid him down on that soft biobed and made him numb and paralyzed for three hours. He said it was too similar to how he got the scar in the first place, being held in place, face down, while they did something he didn't quite understand to one of his most intimate body parts.

"I don’t want surgery." He says, pushing himself up into a sitting position.

Apart from the tenderness and the hypothermia, he doesn’t look affected by his infection, and Jared desperately wants to take it as a good sign. He can’t help but feel that if they didn’t fight yesterday, if he didn’t take the warmth of his own body away for the night in his childish rage, maybe Jensen wouldn’t be - but he’s fine. He must be fine, right? It just takes some time for his immune system to accept the higher amount of hormones in his body. That must be it.

"I'll hurry, but it might take a while. Just stay in bed, okay? Alicia will be here in half an hour." Picking up the first piece of clothing he can find, Jared pulls it up his body and reaches for Jensen's hand. "Would you please talk to her about what we discussed last night?"

He thinks he managed to pull off a nonchalant tone, but inside, he’s worried sick. He knows some species have severe physiological responses to emotional distress - what if it’s his fault? What if it’s his presence itself that’s making Jensen ill? He doesn’t know where they stand anymore. Sometimes, he wishes he could buy an inner voice reader, but he probably wouldn't be able to modify it to hear what Jensen's thinking anyway. If only… He just wants to know what the hell is bothering Jensen so much.

Perhaps he thinks he has to achieve something to be accepted and to stay around. Or it might be Jared's stance on the children thing. But who would blame him for not really wanting… that. Back in the first month, when they were still at the exploring and monitoring stage, Alicia pulled him aside and showed him a holographic prediction of all the ways a gender change and an interspecies pregnancy could fuck Jensen up. While their genes are more compatible than the average mixed couple's, trying to conceive would be phaser roulette. Injuries are guaranteed, survival isn’t. It's scary. He can't imagine that he'd be able to risk someone's life like that. It's either an artificial womb or no child.

He gives Jensen a sad little smile, can’t help it, before stepping up to his door. He can see that Jensen's fiddling with his pendant, but he restrains himself and doesn't check what he's doing, wants to let him figure it out. He has to give him the chance to take care of himself. Smart as he is, he'll probably do better than Jared in a few years anyway.

* * *

Base Level isn't the actual ground floor of their tower, but it's the furthest down the turbolifts go. They are in a building raised on top of another, and safe connection between the two hasn't been available in fifty years. The Great Migration made the city's politics a nightmare, and the wasp nest of mistreated citizens in the lower regions grew too dangerous for the spoiled originals, those, who have been living here since Wandelaar established the colony in 2105. It saddens Jared more than it should that even though their great ancestor dreamed of a new world where equality transcends star systems and race, the stress caused by that sudden, massive amount of people gave a rise to xenophobia.

Jared suspects the animosity towards "mixers" stems from this boiling cauldron of a city too. He remembers the first night - the only one - when he took Jensen to a VR club. It was supposed to be an attempt at exposure therapy, because Jensen can claim all he wants that he doesn't remember his way here, but when Jared cradles him after a nightmare it's always the same string of mumbled words, _"the big black slug swallowed me and ate my stomach". _It doesn't take a genius to see it's the cryotube that haunts him in his dreams.

They knew they had to start dealing with his phobia because it was evident even back then that sooner or later, Jared is going to take him home to Mars and that means boarding a spaceship that, obviously, contains cryotubes. So they went to the club and Jared tweaked their headsets' settings until the place looked like the inside of a ship and the room that some people saw as a cave of treasures, others as a hut in the swamps, became a medbay. He dragged Jensen inside and nagged him until they got up to dance, in slow, measured circles even though glittering synesthetic music thumped from the walls, and it was the last place where Jared would have wanted to do it, but Jensen never watched him with so much trust before, and he was stupid in love. He had to kiss him.

Perhaps this was the point where their connection cracked. Because the problem with these clubs is that they cater to a certain range of guests, and that includes intolerant originals who like to make sure mixers relocate to bars for "their kind". And when Jensen's eyes didn't stop glowing after their kiss, it took no time for them to notice. They threatened to beat Jared up and got close enough to pulling at Jensen's feathers that Jensen cut their palms in fright. It was the only time they went to a place serving alcohol in Altstadt. They can't afford the danger of hanging out together in a district full of originals. If they want to continue this relationship, they will need to move up - which they don't have the money for - or move out of the city. But rural New Earth, as much as it exists, is barren and grey. Boring. A creature of the forest would shrivel away there.

_What are we going to do now? Move to Mars? _Jared asks himself as he steps out of the turbolift. He's greeted by a long, ancient hallway and rows of old metal doors that still work with knobs and physical keys. There aren't any windows here, because this floor is technically in the Precariat, but it belongs to Level Three by law. Only administrator bots are allowed to work in this section, filing and arranging packages for the residents' needs. They send stuff up to students who request it through two-way pipes, but the landing kit is too big and it requires either a proof of extraterrestrial training or a spaceship license. These restrictions become kind of laughable when one considers that Jared, who produced the "The Most Impactful Crash of the Year" according to Altstadt Local, has both.

It's not funny at all though when Jared finally reaches the storage room he was looking for and finds a dozen other students already waiting there with neatly packed generic levi-boxes hovering beside them.

"What's going on?" He asks the Cardassian closest to him.

"Tomorrow's move-out day, my friend." The guy says, as condescending as his species usually is. There’s a real stuffed duckling hanging from his belt like a scalp, a sign of his ever-so-important dominance. Thank Fate Jensen isn't here to see it.

"Shit." Jared scuffs his right foot on the floor.

He forgot to tell Jensen that they will have to leave soon. The university gave him some leeway after his therapist concluded an official diagnosis, but six weeks isn't much time in the grand scheme of things. Especially when you have no idea which way you want to run and from whom. It’s still hard to carry on after Saxet-d. He isn’t the same person anymore, but sometimes, when he feels crippled by the memories or the vice around his lungs, he wishes he was. He would be happy to stay here, those days, but New Earth Capital eats Jensen alive and Mars doesn't have enough space to take both Jared and his mom's disappointment. And the third option… It's impossible.

The university's lead professor in First Contact gave Jared a once in a lifetime offer to accompany him on the rehabilitation programme the Federation launched for Saxet-d. They can't undo the untimely contact, of course, but helping the locals handle it, protecting them from the catastrophe tourists flocking to the locked-up zone and studying their culture in the meantime is every xeno-scientist's wet dream. With the knowledge Jared gathered during the months he spent there - and the five more after, which they don't know about - he could be a key element in reaching out to the people living there and to those who have been captured and experimented on by the nomads. He'd be important and appreciated, and he could truly help, do something good and worthwhile.

It's his dream.

But he would have to go alone. Jensen doesn't belong here, and if authorities take notice of him, he would be sent back to the parents who don't love him or to the new governor, Miquitzli, who put a bounty on his head just to prove the apocalypse wouldn't come when his blood spills. They can't let that happen. He would have to stay with Jared's brother or alone, if he found himself strong enough. He's not a family pet, Jared can't expect him to stay and wait until he comes back from the mission, like his dogs do back on Mars. Would he even understand that Jared still loves him, that it's not abandonment, that he's coming back? Not likely. How could Jared ever leave him behind like that? Every hour apart is torture, it's separation anxiety. He can't go. _Can't. _But he wants to.

* * *

It takes forty minutes to collect the goddamn extreme weather equipment. Why didn't he just order one from the Cloud? He would have had to pay, but he wouldn't have needed to leave Jensen's side for more than five minutes to get it. He's been tempted to call Jensen since about the ten minute mark, but he holds himself in check and resists the current of unease he feels in his fingertips. Nothing happens in forty minutes. Jensen must have gone right back to sleep. He's sick, he probably doesn't have the energy to do much else but replicating some of his favourite soup for himself. Or perhaps he's exacting revenge by rearranging everything he can in the room into concentric circles because "it looks prettier" and he knows Jared hates it.

The door is locked anyway. Jared always makes sure it is, and he feels like a control freak for it, but it's to keep Jensen safe. He's never been outside alone. People would take advantage of him.

Once, they almost lost each other in a store. Going out to actual physical shops is kind of a touristy thing to do in Altstadt, so Jared hadn't been in one in two years and he didn't expect the crowd on the street, celebrating the renovated bakery where Wandelaar supposedly had a coffee once. It's quite implausible since the man disappeared in 2123 and most of Altstadt, the core of Level Three, was built in the forties, but some people are gullible enough to flock to these fake historical sites. However, that didn't mean the pastries weren't absolutely amazing. They smelled delicious even from afar, warm and spicy in contrast to the biting wind, and to Jensen's much more sensitive nose, they must have felt magical. The scent drew him away from Jared's side, and by the time Jared noticed, he was nowhere to be found.

It took ten minutes of blind panic to spot him again, between the cozy shelves inside. There was peace on his ivory cheeks and the shadow of a crease in the corner of his eye, where a sea-green freckle sat like one of the angry tears he shed last night. He was a walking contradiction, still is. His body is marked, his skin tainted by ropes of unwanted ink, but he can be the most serene thing in the world. Maybe it was only Jared's overwhelming relief, but Jensen looked stunningly happy that day, and he thought, _who would want him to change? _Jared would rather change himself instead.

Sometimes, when they are lying naked in bed together, he looks at the unmarred skin of his arms and feels strangely guilty, because before Jensen, he never once stopped to consider that in some cultures, tattoos can be painful and punishing, permanent signs of social status. It doesn't work like that in the so-called modern world, and he had no reason to think further about it. But now that he did, he gets uncomfortable when he catches himself tracing the lines on Jensen's chest or kissing the circles on his forehead. He told Jensen that they could remove them if he wanted, but he didn't get a straightforward answer. Not much of a surprise, since Jensen still struggles to grasp that he has freedom and control over his own body.

Lost in his troubled thoughts, Jared is halfway up in the turbolift when his comm signals an incoming call from Alicia. As he fumbles to put his package into levitating mode, her holographic projection pops up in front of him and starts talking a parsec a minute.

“Jared, I’m so sorry, please don't hate me, I don’t know what to do, I meant to arrive sooner -"

"Hey, _hey._ What's wrong?" The dread is already there in Jared's temple, an avalanche just waiting for the final snowball to pour over his entire body like liquid ice, and he wants to stay calm but can't keep it from slipping over his head as she wrings her knuckles and says the last thing he wanted to hear today.

"Jensen's gone!" She exclaims, and for an endless, horrifying second, Jared thinks gone means_ gone, _forever. "He's not in your room."

"Maybe the neighbours -" He starts, but Alicia shakes her head, frantically pacing. "Did you call him? Did you -"

"He didn't answer!"

"All right." Jared tries not to melt into full-blown panic. He blows out a breath and types a certain code into his comm's projected screen. "All right. Let me try something."

He calls the pendant he gave Jensen a few months ago. It's unique, designed to function as a communicator and a tracker as well as a beautiful piece of jewellery that matches Jensen's freckles. Jensen never takes it off - it's his "mating stone", he says, and always promises that he will give Jared a new one in turn to replace the one they lost on Saxet-d.

"Come on." Jared mutters over and over again until his comm beeps and projects a hologram of Jensen desperately looking up at something above him. "Jensen!"

"Ja - d!" Jensen exclaims, but his voice cracks and the projection flickers. He seems ruffled and wet, and there's an angry blue bruise on his temple. His feathers are glowing, sharp spikes that push Jared's worry up another notch.

Jared's heart accelerates. "Are you hurt? Where are you?"

"Don't know. - kay. My head - but - kay." Jensen shivers, and his tone shifts into the pitch it usually takes when he feels so lost he isn't even sure he's alive anymore. He stumbles over something, then crouches down and huddles close to a brick wall, balling his hands into fists. "Cold. Come to - Find me, please."

Then the line disconnects, and the comm beeps - it couldn't access the location data.

Jared dies. He just staggers back against the turbolift and doesn’t breathe anymore. It’s impossible - Jensen’s lost, and he didn’t say _stay where you are, _he didn’t say _don’t move _or _I’ll find you, _which means Jensen will move and he will never, ever find him again, and there are one billion people in this city, someone's going to hurt him, someone's going to -

_No._

He must keep his composure.

How far could Jensen have gone? Even if he left immediately after Jared, forty minutes can't be enough to get to a seriously dangerous place. Perhaps he's in an alleyway around the corner. He must have been trying to go back to the bakery, Jared figures, or to one of those few places where he feels safe. But why? Why did he run away? Did he not understand that Jared wanted to help him?

"I'm a _fucking_ idiot." Jared swears and kicks the turbolift's door, then slams his hand on the mechanical controls to reverse it and start going back down. He forgot to switch languages when he left, didn't he? It was too early, and he was concerned, and he forgot. But Jensen should have understood anyway, God, he should have, he's fluent enough.

As soon as the door swishes open, Jared runs out in a mad dash, asking his comm to direct him to each alley and dim nook between buildings around the biggest intersection on the way from their accommodation to the bakery. It's his best shot, because he has no idea where exactly Jensen lost his way, but he knows he wouldn't mind hiding in the darkness if a crowd or a sensation overwhelmed him, and that place no doubt would. He tries to shorten the list as he goes, panting into his device to narrow it down to brick walls and unkempt streets, but his comm chimes back - there's only carbon fibre and graphene in the selected district.

Jared stops and tears his sweaty hand through his hair. Not here, not here, not here...

Oh God, where then?

"Hey, Jay, what's up, man?" Someone calls out for him from an old-school marijuana pavilion, placed there to draw tourists interested in the late culture of Old Earth. Jared doesn't look, doesn't even try to recognise whoever it is, his mind is in complete shutdown. He calls Jensen's pendant, then his comm, and again, as fast as his device can do it, but he never gets an answer. What if someone already snatched him up?

"Did something happen?" The voice asks, now close enough that he automatically registers as Mike, their neighbour.

"I can't find Jensen." Jared says, terrified down to the marrow of his bones. He could scan every square meter of this city and still miss him, because every second could be one step farther away. He can't keep the image of a creepy collector luring Jensen off the street and capturing him, putting him in a cage in a club where all the rich assholes would stare at him, _his Jensen..._

Mike squeezes his elbow. "I just saw him, like, twenty minutes ago."

"What?" Jared's head snaps up, heart constricting. "Where? Did he, did he say anything -"

"Said he wanted to surprise you. At your graduation." His _what? _How did Jensen even know about that? Jared didn't tell him on purpose, because he wasn't even sure he'd go himself. "I told him to take the yellow train."

"The yellow train." Jared gasps and reaches for his comm again, looks for the closest station and starts running that way, Mike hot on his heels. Jesus, what if Jensen boarded a train? He doesn't have enough credit on his ID to come back, it's just the leftover from that one time Jared had to resort to public transport with him.

"He looked upset." Mike says when they come to a stop at an intersection, slapping at a stray zipbug that attacks his face. It buzzes away with its usual disgusting squelching noises and latches onto the frayed sleeve of a beggar's shirt. They must have sneaked upstairs from the Precariat together.

"He's sick. He was supposed to stay home, I told him. God,_ I told him." _Jared digs his fingers into his own arm in despair. "It couldn't have been more than forty minutes!"

"Do you think he saw the sign?" Mike asks, pointing at the flashing warning that tells them the station is closed until further notice.

"Even if he did…" He can't read well enough for that yet. Jared shakes his head, running a hand through his hair again. "We have to think like him."

"He could have asked someone."

"A stranger? Never. Unless he offered his own…" ._..help first, _Jared thinks and takes a hairpin turn back to the stinking homeless guy. The exact thing Jensen would do.

When the man tells them he sent Jen to the police station, Jared's first reaction is relief, because they are on the right freakin' track, the second is dread. Did someone realize he was illegal? Did they catch him or pursue him until he lost his way? How long has it been? Maybe, if Jensen stays where he is just a little while longer, Jared can catch up to him.

He doesn't know why Mike comes along with him - perhaps he feels guilty for not stopping Jensen when things got suspicious - but he doesn't care either. He spots a street artist in the process of wrangling money from an unsuspecting couple and sees red. The vintage-style 2D photograph the guy is waving around as proof of his varied clientele is actually Jensen, looking clueless and clutching at his pendant as if he was trying to protect it. If this bastard broke the necklace or laid even a single finger on Jensen, Jared is going to strangle him.

"You!" He barks, advancing on him with a rage that scares all the potential customers away. "Where did you get that?" He wrestles the photo out of the man's greedy hand, then grabs his fake 22nd century clothing and slams him up against his own booth.

"Where's he? What did you do to him?" Jared demands, all but frothing. This is his nightmare. Someone taking Jensen as if he was some exotic, illicit artifact and making money out of his suffering, like the atrocities those nomads did to his people back home.

"What the fuck, man, leave me alone! This is a free state, I can picture what I want!" The guy yells, repeatedly hitting and clawing at the hands Jared presses right up against his throat. "I ain't got nothing to do with this! Your goddamn xeno friend took a train."

"Which one? _Which?!"_

A gentle hand appears on Jared's shoulder, pulling him away. "Jay, come on, there's a policeman right across from us, you don't wanna get arrested now…"

"Sorry." Jared mutters to the disgruntled artist and promptly turns his back at him, heading to the small train stop nestled in the corner of the police station.

"Hey, my picture!" The guy calls after him, but Jared just presses the printed photo to his chest and closes his eyes for one second of a prayer.

_Please, let me find him._

Next thing he knows, there are twines curling around his shoulder, and a gentle, androgynous voice whispers into his ear. "Are you looking for someone?"

He can't help it, he jumps away from the Fraxinus. Their empathic abilities always made him uncomfortable, like they could stare into the depth of his soul while he wasn't even allowed to guess or ask their gender, since they consider that an intimate fact.

"Oh, him." The Fraxinus nods when it gets a glimpse of the photograph. It steps back and, to Jared's horror, reveals it's a police officer too. Mike is gone from his side faster than he could blink. "I put him on the δ-board."

It's a large holographic sign circling around the district, projecting pictures of missing people and messages meant for them. It's usually overfilled by semi-legal immigrants who would rather risk living in the Precariat without valid papers than going home to their own hopeless world. Here, at least, they convince you that you have a chance to live in real light and natural air.

It's worrying that the officer saw right through Jensen and classified him as one these drifters without hesitation. What if they found out about the fake identity?

"Why the δ-board?" Even though the Fraxinus rarely make expressions, Jared's senses know that this one has just levelled an exasperated look at him.

"He said he was Eridani, but his thoughts swam in blood and fear." It says, calm as ever. "Don't attempt to fool me. You must know that no Eridani would break the Eternal Peace their tribes made with each other."

Despite his situation, Jared's impressed. Members of the local police aren't famous for their awareness of remote alien civilizations.

"Look." The Fraxinus goes on before he could launch into his sob story to avoid an arrest. "We have bigger problems than the poor immigrants we catch each day. The Crimson Hand is plotting a mission to break through the Precariat's force fields. I was placed here to screen the passengers, not to catch a handful of morsels in the wind."

Jared can't believe his ears. "Are you going to let me go?"

The being nods. "I felt his pain too, you know, when I first came here. I'm glad someone's looking for him." It says, the real reason behind its unexpected kindness. "He took the Blue Line."

Jared almost shakes apart from the relief, because that train, while not the right one, just takes him around Altstadt in a wide circle, doesn't go down. It has a few stops on the edge of the Crimson Hand's territory, but they wouldn't be daring or desperate enough to come all the way to the tracks. It wouldn't be worth it for them.

Jensen didn't go down.

He'll be fine.

Jared's going to find him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jensen has an eventful day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the kudos and comments, as always, I'll try to update as soon as possible. I can't wait to hear what you think of this part. :)

There are eight-legged insects around the lamp flickering above his head, their bodies silver globs in the faint blue light. They are sitting in a sheet of dirty webs, hanging from the brick alcove, but Jensen can't see any webbing-plant that could have left it behind. Nothing fire-red stands out. Do the insects themselves make it in this world? Why?

It's cold here, damp. The wind blows through the tunnel he's hiding in, streaming down from the hard metal tube a few steps away. He was dumped into that one, that's how he ended up here, so far below the train and alone. How will he get back to Jared now? He missed his graduation! His pile of mistakes is high enough that not even an ocelotl would be able to climb it.

There's a creek in the middle of the street, the one he slipped into, but no force field. All Jensen sees is ground, a real, solid one, without any skyways. Although he's happy he can't fall further from here, he knows what this means, and it scares him. Once, when he asked if they could ever see the earth in this Skycity, Jared stroked his cheek and said, _"we wouldn't be able to come back alive." _It can't be true. If there's a way in, there must be one out too.

Jensen presses on his pendant and makes a quiet sound of worry when it doesn't turn on. The thieves cracked it and it's broken now, some of its beautiful gemstones are missing. The only thing it can still do is making projections, replaying pale shadows of happy memories, of Jared laughing, and sleeping, and saying silly things at dark in the morning. Jensen wants to cry.

"Please find me." He whispers and pulls his legs closer to himself to keep more of his heat.

His head hurts worse than it did when the priests did this to him before tattoos. The thieves must have been careless about catching him or they didn't catch him at all, and there's a bump on his head now, like a horn. If it grew a little bigger, he could look like a god in his true form. The priests wouldn't even need to crown him for his Sacrifice. The thought makes him laugh with the air shaking in his throat, because at the same time, he can't breathe from the fear that floods his chest. Why does the air smell of death here? That overly sweet, nose-crunching stink of rotten mass? It's coming from the large black bags under the metal tube, the ones that saved Jensen's bones from breaking when he landed. He shudders. What else have they thrown down here from the station above? Perhaps this is the river and those are the sacrifices of this undead city, and the burnt men are the priests.

His empty stomach churns at the thought. The thieves left his cookies in his pocket, so he eats one to comfort himself, taking the smallest bites he can and wishing he stayed home. He just wanted to make Jared happy, but he couldn't even do that much. As always, he just made everything worse. Perhaps this is his destiny after all. His Sun living up in the Sky, forever unreachable, while he's stuck to earth, water, wind and metal, and death in this dark place. Like Quetzalitzli.

Something scratches the brick next to him, and he startles, jumping to his feet when a shoe-sized fat animal trots out of a hole it carved into the wall. It has muddy patches in its fur and a long, worm-like tail which would probably sting if this creature was born in Altepetl. It's eating the morsels Jensen's crumbling cookie sprinkled over the cube stones this street is made of, sniffing the air tentatively when it reaches Jensen's feet. Even though it's furry and hesitant to come close, it reminds Jensen of Chichi, his little scaly tecoixin, and he's hit by a wave of longing for his home. It was an easier life, he thinks sometimes, everything was determined and laid out for him by others. He knew everything, the past of his world, his own future, the beasts of the forest and all fruits and trees by sight or smell alone. And he had Tlatoani. He can't remember a day when he didn't have him, when he couldn't feel his love. But all that is gone now.

"Are you hungry, Chichi?" He asks the creature, furiously wiping the wetness from his eyes. He's been so weak in soul lately, everything makes him cry. He needs to strengthen his control if he wants to convince Jared that he doesn't want to be a woman. "We can share."

He puts the rest of the cookie in front of the animal and it gobbles it up as if it was living on garbage until now. Jensen wants to tuck it into his coat and pet its head while he looks for a way out, but it would break another of Jared's rules, and he did enough of that for today, he knows. He learnt his lesson about wild otherworldly beasts anyway. When Jared first showed him the human concept called _romantic date,_ they went to High Park at night and sat in a meadow of lights, pink, blue and green, and Jensen lay down between the strange globs of grass to pretend he was a part of them, just a cluster of shiny dots. He was lighter than a leaf that day. That's why he wanted to take something home from the park, to remember, and when Jared turned away, he picked up a small_ tunicate, _a squishy, blue tube-animal that hid in the bushes. He sneaked it home in secret. He's convinced he would have handled it, but it nipped his fingers in fear when he tried to domesticate it, and his vision became wavy, like it did on the day of the Dance. The world turned into bright liquid, and it hurt so bad that Jared had to put a strange scarf around his eyes until Alicia took the poison from the bite. He never felt more like a child than he did in those few helpless beats.

"I'm sorry I can't give you more." He tells his furry friend, then takes a deep breath and jumps over the stream to the stinking bags. Jared might not reach him in time to save him from this cutting cold - he needs to do something himself.

His fall took a long time, but the tube isn't straight, it was just a fast slide until the end. Maybe, he could go back up to the train through that. He struggles his way up the bag-mountain, then pushes his muscles as hard as he can and jumps. He catches the side of the tube, but his hooks can't find traction on the slippery metal, and no matter how his fingertips try to hold him up, he slides back down with a horrible screeching sound. Jensen is a climber, always been one, but none of his skills are enough for the task - he jumps and scrapes the hooks all the way down along the silver surface, over and over again until his hand starts bleeding and he needs to stop.

"Mictlan!" He curses, sucking three fingers into his mouth to heal the broken hooks and torn skin. Although they look normal within a few minutes, he's going to feel how much weaker they are for at least two days, and the last thing he needed was more discomfort. His body feels ill as it is.

"Found one!" Someone exclaims behind him, and he startles, tumbles down the bags and into the black mud next to them. His boots get dirty all the way to his ankles, and he hates it, _hates it. _This place is punishment for his disobedience, for not completing the cycle right in Altepetl.

"Is it pretty?" Another human asks, jogging towards the alley from the other end of the tunnel. Jensen's caught between the two of them. The only way out is up, but it's impossible to escape through the slippery tube.

"Better!" The first man yells, advancing. His wide grin could rival Cipatli's thousand teeth. "It might actually be untouched this time."

Untouched? Jensen has been touched plenty, by people he wanted and others he didn't. The first time they put ink on his face, he bit the lead priest's hooks off.

"Come here." The human calls for him, wiggling his fingers as if he was a _dog._ "Come on. Which freak language do you speak, huh?"

He has a net in his hands and a _phaser _around his waist, but Jared taught Jensen well, so he knows that gun is empty. His night eye would be able to detect the heat of a working core, but he only sees the man's red barrel of a body. It's overheating from exhaustion or sickness, he guesses.

"Think you can hypnotize me?" Clutching at the white flower symbol on his coat, the human laughs. This is the exact same question Jared's friends asked during a dinner when Jared went to the bathroom. Why do they always think his light is magic? These people built flying cars and mountain-towers, how could the things Jensen was given by the gods seem more mystical to them? "You know you're caught. Now come here like a good boy."

He isn't one though. As the priests used to say, his soul must have been part of Quetzalitzli's eyebrow, because everyone can hold their tongue and body to hide their feelings, but to control an eyebrow - that is only for the strongest. They took great pleasure in thinking they were powerful enough to do that, but they never knew about Tlatoani and all the rules Jensen broke to make him proud. He has never given in easily, and he isn't going to start now. This man lost his chance to surprise him like the thieves did in the morning, and his meaty body wouldn't be able to keep up if Jensen had somewhere to run. One wrong step and he'll go home empty-handed.

"Why don't you bag it already?" His partner complains, about to reach them, and the man reflexively turns his head towards the source of the noise.

It's enough - Jensen springs into motion and doesn't think, just shoots him in the cheek with a feather. It doesn't pierce too deep, because he's out of practice and Jared's care makes him pampered and weak, but the human howls in pain and drops the net as the tiny metallic hairs sink into him like needles from the inside. Although the alley's exit is still blocked by the other man, he's distracted by his friend, and Jensen is fast when he needs to be. He can't climb a metal tube, but a brick wall? Old and worn as it is, his hooks sink into its pores like magnets, and he makes it up to the first window in three beats. He breaks in through the glassless panel, rushes across the demolished room he finds, then climbs out the opposite window and runs away as soon as his feet hit the cube-stones on the other side.

He gets horribly lost. The streets are different here, they are all square and straight, not like the ones in Altepetl, and he doesn't have any sense of direction roaming through them. They all look the same, the choices are the same, left, right or straight, if he turns around, it's still left, right or straight, nothing to orient himself to, and he can't see the sky to ask the Moons' tears for help. There's nothing but murky darkness up there, and pouring rain showering down. Running warmed Jensen up, but the shivers are still there in his fingertips, and his feathers feel heavy. They are drooping because his neck muscles can't hold them up, and that means he's getting sick.

He decided he'd try finding a train and ask for help to get back up. All the stations he has seen before were crowded and bright, so he follows the easy logic bloodsucking butterflies use, going in the warmest directions he can see with his night eye. Body heat and light should give the station a deep orange glow. The streets became wider since he left the alley and the tunnel leading to it, wide enough to fit houses between the buildings, but the space doesn't feel big because it's filled by strange contraptions and machines scattered around and scaffolding that some creatures seem to use as houses or stores. Unlike Level Three's smoothness, everything feels jagged and imperfect here, the people, the rolling car-things, the shacks scooped together at the base of these sky-high towers. Most of the streetlights are broken or missing altogether, but everything is decorated by neon signs and _holograms._ There's a corpse in a booth with the word P-L-A-Y on its forehead. The smell makes all of Jensen's instincts pray for the gods to have mercy because it's pestilence. Something wails inside a house.

This is the core of the city, he thinks, and it's not dead like the rest, but rotten, swamped by dirt and disease, deprived of light.

He sings to himself to get through it all. It's what he does when Jared has a bad day and it's him who needs comfort. Usually, Jensen thinks about the healers back home, remembers what they did when someone had an invisible sickness of the soul, then he tries to do those things and help Jared's _PTSD_ to heal. He doesn't quite know what the letters mean, but he saw all the problems before, since the other boys in the Pebble House didn't have Tlatoani to make it better. He really loves taking care of Jared. Stroking his hair and rubbing his nose against it, humming to him, tracing divine spells into his body until his pain turns into laughter. It must be hard to always be alert to keep him okay and Jensen knows he's the reason why Jared isn't with his family, but those times in their room, he forgets. Singing under his breath now brings those nice memories to mind.

On these suffocating streets, everyone wears scarves or masks covering their faces, but he doesn't have anything to use that way, so he just puts his hand over his mouth and ignores how the little fuzz above his lips tickles his fingers. He needs to shave more often nowadays, but Jared hasn't yet noticed, and he didn't want to tell. If his body continues to act as it's supposed to, they are running out of time. Without the necessary mating routine, he's going to become a real man and lose all the eggs he might have had otherwise. Is Jared going to leave if they can't have a baby anymore? Jensen looks up and asks the hiding Sun to give him a few more quincenas. He's sure it won't take longer. Jared will go along one of these days if he submits at the right moment.

The fake birds sitting on the railings of the scaffolding-houses seem to look at him with pity.

At least it's warm down here, now that he left the whistling wind of the death-tube behind. In fact, the air is heavy and stifling under the scaffolds like the den of a nagual-serpent would be. He almost expects to bump into the maze it builds for its offspring to test if they are clever enough to live and hunt alone in the wild. But instead of two-headed snakes, he finds deformed humans in rags and an alien with a long sucker and veiny wings who offers something called _quietus _that puts the suffering people to sleep and makes their body blue-cold instead of orange when Jensen checks them with his night eye. The alien feeds from their brain and they die.

It's a terrible place, but Jensen takes it with his face unmoving like a statue. He's been practicing this since Jared introduced him to his friends and family. First, it happened spontaneously, when he didn't understand if he could laugh at a joke or not, or when he didn't comprehend it at all, but he plays it up nowadays, because he loves how Jared makes his friends laugh with their little routine. It's a useful skill when he's hurt too, when Jared doesn't mirror what he's offering because he doesn't know Altepetl's traditions. Jensen can't ruin the mood by giving away how much he longs for proper bonding gestures. It's a gift as it is that he even has a mate.

There's a commotion ahead, cheering and people banging on a big car-thing filled with rows of metal cans. Some are trying to wrestle themselves up, but a woman dressed in a black hooded coat fires phaser beams at them from the top of the machine. Another human is handing transparent masks with tubes to the mass of noisy beggars. Jensen doesn't know what kind of feeding that could be, but it reminds him of the time when the Sickness came and the priests were desperate to keep the infected jade boys alive. They pumped medicine soup into them when they stopped eating, but none of the ill survived.

He remembers that Tlatoani asked to be in the night guard when the first wave of deaths hit and killed his family. He took Jensen out of the common sleeping room and they went to Jensen's favourite tree, the one with the swing and the fragrant bark, and he held him until he fell asleep on his lap, every single night until it was over and the deaths stopped. Jensen loved those nights. He didn't understand back then, but he knows now, that by breathing in the sick air inside, he could have caught the disease from his friends. As a child, it was mostly just exciting to be close to someone like that.

He doesn't want to risk catching whichever sickness those desperate people have, so he stops and takes a more thorough look around. A robot is watching him from the other side of the road even though its eyes are nothing but hollow sockets with a stray wire sticking out. When Jensen moves, it follows, and the glowing tail welded to its bottom scrapes the first layer of garbage off the pavement. It's leaking oil from its chest. There's a flickering sign ahead, a drawing of a spoon, and Jensen manages to read the words under it, F-R-E-E S-O-U-P. He doesn't think twice about rushing inside from the dangers of the street.

Except for the giant painting of winged babies on the wall, the restaurant looks constricting and barren like the _spaceship _that brought Jensen here. He lied to Jared about not remembering it. He has snapshots in his mind that can only be from the journey, but he prefers not to bring the experience up. It's enough that he has his new scar on his stomach, another blemish to mark it. The opposite of Jared's body, which is smooth and clean of dots and lines, and his neck… Jensen spends too much time wanting to bite it and holding back. To have babies, he would need_ Jared_ to bite _him,_ more than once, but the fool won't do it while the spot hurts.

It's irritating, how unused Jensen is to having the normal shape there. Whenever something brushes against it, he wants to reach up and knead it or wants Jared to caress him there because it's less embarrassing to need a mate's touch than his own. His body doesn't want to grow, and he feels how wrong it is right now, something swollen under his skin. The pain makes it difficult to turn his face up to the Sky. His neck is burning and his fingers feel as damp-cold as moss inside a cave when they touch it. He doesn't really know if this is something that happens to everyone who grows into a man the proper way or if it's only him, defective and ten years too late.

"Welcome. I'm Peter, may I take your order?" The robot who serves the food ushers him to a table, reciting something called a _prophecy,_ and Jensen's boots make squelching sounds on the sticky floor as he lets the bearded machine guide him to a seat. All the others are empty, but he got the one closest to the yellowish windows, and he can see that the eyeless robot is still there, in the middle of the street now. It's watching a group of child-sized adult people with the same threatening intensity. Jensen isn't going to leave this place until that deranged metal box is prowling there, looking for victims.

He gets the soup, but it doesn't resemble what the replicator makes. It's red like human blood and has little white kernels floating around in it, sometimes even moving on their own. They might be worms, which Jensen was only allowed to eat on festive days back home, so he feels rebellious chewing them right now. The colour of the liquid gives him complicated feelings. He remembers the first time he healed Jared, how his blood tasted and looked, and he realizes it must be strange from the human perspective that he thinks fondly of the taste of his mate's blood, but it's not uncommon in Altepetl, so he tries not to be embarrassed by the warmth in his chest and enjoys his meal.

Then Peter destroys his momentary happiness by making an announcement to the empty restaurant in his automatic, lifeless voice. "Our gates are closing."

Jensen doesn't want to leave just yet. It's raining outside, but the drops are different than the ones they had back home - these look grey and cold, and the ponds are murky. He misses the gentle pink clouds of the land and even the furious storms that Quetzalitzli unleashed on the forest. They always left within a few flower-turns. But the water pouring down here seems harsh and permanent, he can imagine it going on for quincenas.

“How d’you plan to pay?” A tall, slender woman interrupts his thoughts. She has a ribbon in her curly hair that matches her yellow dress, and the spot of sun-colour in all this darkness makes Jensen's heart ache. He wants to know how she got the strength to dress for light instead of a neverending night.

“Pay?” He asks, confused.

“Nothing comes for free in this world.” Her full lips purse as she rolls her eyes.

They are brown like the cube sweets Jared needs when the pain in his soul feels inconsolable, a colour Jensen has only ever seen in humans. Jared's eyes hold little specks of it, but they are blue and green too, unique and interesting. Jensen knows it's an unattractive habit for someone who already secured a mate, but he likes to stare at them and flash his light three times to ask again, like a mate-crazed hatchling, be mine to love? It's funny when Jared tries to answer, because he doesn't understand, and he often jokes, _you're such a flirt, Jen. I bet all the pretty boys fall for that. _Somehow, he always assumes Jensen is better material for making a family than he actually is. The only other person who wanted him that way was Danneel, and she was attracted to his privileges, not his potential.

"It says free soup."

"If you buy the daily menu, yes."

Oh. Another mistake! Can this day get any worse? Jensen bows his head and sniffs the unwelcome sadness back so that it doesn't spill out like it usually does nowadays. He wants Jared. “I'm sorry. My credits are lost.”

“You’ve been mugged, haven’t you?” She sighs, but her voice softens and her work-rough hand drops from her waist.

Jensen doesn't know the expression _mugged,_ but he assumes it has something to do with his disheveled appearance. "The white-flower men chased me."

"Oh, the Purity Order?" She laughs. "Those mad cultists are still paying their collectors when you'd sooner find a clean lung here than an actual virgin."

Virgin. He knows that word. Jared told him he shouldn't be ashamed of it, because no one cares in this world, but some people obviously do. Twelve quincenas with a mate and still nothing. What if Jared just wants him to believe sex doesn't matter because Jensen isn't desirable?

When no answer comes, she hums and drops into the seat across from him. “All right. How about, you do the dishes and I let you go?”

Jensen smiles. Finally, something he can do. “Thank you. I can clean very well.”

She snorts. “I bet you can.”

The girl lets him out through the back door, but doesn't follow, and Jensen is once again left alone in a harsh place with nowhere to go and no energy to run. His bones ache from exhaustion and something invisible and heavy. He sits down on the steps leading to the door, protected from the rain by the unsteady scaffolding above, and buries his face in his knees. Staying here, hidden from the larger street is probably safer than wandering in nothingness alone. Jared's looking for him, he knows, and it will be easier to find him if he keeps close to one place. If only those _Purity_ men hadn't chased him away from the _chute..._

A female robot with her jaw hanging halfway off her face sashays over to him. Her only clothes are purple _underwear _and cup-like things on top. The fake human skin they leave uncovered glistens in the blue neon light of the charging place she detached from. "Wanna go for a ride, stud?"

He blinks. Do they have ants here? "My name is Jensen."

"I can call you anything you want." She purrs and crouches in front of him, flashing him a projection of prices between her cup-things he can't read well enough to understand. "I have a quiet place just for us, honey."

He feels pity for her because the remnants of her face show that she must have been beautiful once, before something in her journey went wrong and ruined her. Jensen isn't sure about the extent of these almost-creatures' feelings and abilities, but he hopes she isn't suffering from the loss of that old life.

"Get the hell away from that boy!" He hears as the door opens behind him, and the broken robot jumps up, her eyes bugging out of her face in an unnatural grimace of anger.

"You don't own the street, Orisha." She hisses, all her mechanical teeth bared.

The woman in the yellow dress comes down and stands in front of Jensen to make her point clear. "But I know someone who does!"

The robot backs away, grumbling, and Jensen's left staring up at Orisha, a new surge of hope in his chest. If she knows someone that powerful, she must know a way out, right?

"Do you know the lord of the city?" He asks.

"Only this city's." She says as she starts walking away, her steps fast and sure. Jensen scrambles to follow. "But does anything else matter?"

"You live here but you know the lord. Why?"

She looks at him like he grew a set of feathers on his head. "This is the safest place in our city, where else would I go?"

"Up."

"Told you." She mutters as they enter the main street again. Her body isn't welcoming when Jensen shuffles closer in fear. It's evident that she doesn't want anything to do with him, but that's still the nicest approach he received here, so he clings to her presence and ignores her tone. "I only know one lord, and he got nothing to do with the upstairs folks."

They pass a man with his head shaved only in the middle in a circle. Is that a fashionable choice? Jensen doubts it. The human is dunking old shoes in some kind of water with a cross in it, and a curving line of people with bottles moan in wonder in front of him. A woman extends trembling hands to accept the first shoe.

"What is he doing?" Jensen whispers, brushing against Orisha's side for comfort.

She scoffs. "Selling holy junk for clear oxygen or clinic tickets."

"Holyjunk?"

"It's two words. Holy means, uh... something from God?" She explains, and Jensen nods to signal he understood. "Junk is anything he finds on the street. He's fooling people to get rich."

It's puzzling how someone could get rich from hospital tickets, but there must be a way to sell them at the market, Jensen guesses. Perhaps the hospitals are more crowded here than the beautiful, clean ones on Level Three where you feel like you entered a sanctuary by stepping inside.

"Look, I don't know who you are, so get lost, all right?" Orisha tells him, which is quite a confusing order. It must be an expression Jared hasn't used around him before.

Jensen frowns. "I'm already lost."

They enter a huge square where people are sitting on the roofs of their cars and injecting things from vials, and the loud music barely dampens the clamour of street merchants who sell clothes and items Jared would put away for _dematerialization, _and there are packages falling from the sky that people run up to and tear apart to get at the contents. A group of children are throwing rocks at the animals scurrying all over the place, and Jensen is horrified to recognise them as the same worm-tailed things as his furry friend from the chute. A white fake-spaceship looms over the crowd.

"Landing Day is just around the corner, everyone's feeling the holiday cheer." Orisha explains when Jensen grips a fold of her dress in apprehension. He doesn't want to remember the Sacrifice, he doesn't want to, it's his worst memory, and this sounds the same, sounds frightening. She shakes his hand off. "Let go. I can't take you in, I'm not a charity for lost toys."

"Toys?"

She doesn't reply, just walks up to a deep red painted handprint on the closest wall and presses her own palm to it, eyes closed in a reverent prayer. She raises her other hand and shakes it next to her head, then she touches her chest and shoulders, one after the other. She resumes her walk as if nothing happened after that.

"Why did you do that?" Jensen asks. It's not a universal human gesture, because Jared never uses it, but he saw something similar once in the news when they watched them with Chad and the show mentioned the place called _Old Earth._

"For good luck." She says, tipping her face back to let the rain trickle down on it. They are both sopping wet, but she seems to relish in it, as if it was cleansing instead of the dirty, stinging series of pellets it is. "And for him to have another day."

"Him?"

"Tito."

Jensen never heard of him. He knows Raoul Wandelaar because Level Three is dedicated to his memory, the leader of the group of humans who made the city, but Tito doesn't sound familiar. "Who's Tito?"

Orisha stops and gives him a long look. She chews on the tip of her ring finger in hesitation, but then Jensen shudders in the cold and her hard outerior seems to crack. She grabs Jensen's hands, perhaps checking for signs of illness, then she lets go and moves a brick in the wall behind her. A hidden door bangs open, the entrance of a house. "Come on, we're home."

“You can stay a few nights, but next week I’m outta here, baby!” She announces as soon as they are safely inside, disappearing in a room that has a white stone container in it. She puts something on the tap, then starts filling it with water. The steam makes Jensen long for his own bathroom back home, and even Jared's_ sonic shower _that doesn't make you wet, but warms you up.

“Don’t call me that.” He mumbles. He's not hers. She hasn't even tried the first mating step and Jensen isn't impressed. He misses Jared's smell, the way it tells him he's home and the world is safe. Jared isn't aware of this, but rubbing noses is a way of sharing scents for mates, a sensation much more important to Jensen's people than to humans. In his misery, Jensen holds his own wrist to his mouth and tries to pick up on the traces of home still clinging to his skin.

Orisha raises her eyebrows, slipping the ribbon from her hair. Her thick locks don't tumble down like Alicia's do when she unties them, and Jensen is once again hit by the surprise of how different humans can be. He feels like his own people are more similar to each other. “Yeah? How should I call you then, weird boy?”

“I’m Jensen.”

“Well, Jensen, I’m moving to the headquarters. This is only temporary, you must figure something out for the rest of the month.”

Month? It is impossible that Jensen will be lost and helpless that long. “I want to go back to Jared.”

“Jared? Is he one of those rich assholes with the xeno-pets?” She asks, thrusting a coarse cloth into Jensen's hands so that he can dry himself. It's not pleasant, but her place is so small that their warmth chases the cold away from it. Careful not to pull them, Jensen wipes his feathers one by one. He hates losing one of them, the itch of its missing root stays with him until the new one starts to grow.

“Does he live high?”

“Yes.” So high that Jensen didn't even know that this was the world hidden under them.

“Of course.” Orisha mutters, then shakes her head. “You poor thing. Your master must have dumped you like so many others out there. Down the trash chute.” She smiles, but it isn't a happy expression. It has a vicious edge. “District got its name for a reason.”

“He isn’t master.” Jensen protests with an indignant frown. “Look.”

He pulls out his broken pendant and presses on it to show the holovideo it projects automatically. It's the first they took together, right there in the egg-swing after Jared gifted him with the stone.

_"... recording like this."_ Jared says in the projection and props the pendant up on the windowsill until Jensen's confused face is visible._ "Say something."_

Jensen's projection fiddles with his shirt. _"Are you sure I'm dressed nice enough?"_

Jared laughs. _"You don't have to be dressed at all!"_

_"I've never done this before."_ Jensen remembers that he didn't want to admit it, but as usual, he couldn't keep anything too long from Jared and his pleading eyes. _"The priests said no one can record a jade boy. It's unholy."_

_"Come here._" Jared sobered up, reaching out for him, and they hugged for a long time. They forgot the recording, and that's why Jensen likes this moment so, so much. _"We can take as many pictures of you as you want."_

Orisha seems contemplative at the end, looking Jensen up and down. "A master would never learn a pet's language."

"I told you."

She gives him an inscrutable smile. There's something foreboding in it. "Let me get a blanket for you."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jared spirals into despair. Jensen meets new people and starts realizing something about his worldview.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all had a lovely month so far. Sorry for the delay, but this is a long chapter at least. :)

Not here, not here, not there, nowhere, where's he, where did he go? All the stops and all the alleys are empty, nothing, he's gone. Gone.

"Jensen!" Jared yells into yet another deserted nook, tearing at his hair. What started as minor trembles in his fingers has now turned into full-blown shaking, and daylight is seeping away.

"I can't…" He slaps his thighs just to feel something, _anything, _that's not this molten ice around his heart. "I lost him. How could I? How the fuck could I… Can't believe this is happening."

"Hey, no, don't give up." Mike comes up to him and pats his shoulder, as if it was just a precious object on the line, not Jensen's wellbeing, his _life._ Jared wants to shove him away and scream. "Any news from the doc?"

Jared shakes his head. Alicia offered to stay at their place in case Jen found his way back home, but ten hours and still nothing, just the circle of body-warm blankets he left behind. He made sure his little nest was in order before he left, like every other normal morning, stupid, so stupid. He always respected Jared's rules before. Why did he run away now? God. Why? The moisture in Jared's eyes spills over and runs down along his nose in two symmetrical lines, and he thinks, _lines and circles. They weren't made to fit together._

"What if he saw a familiar place and went inside?" Mike suggests, probably too guilty to leave, but too ignorant to realise how much danger Jensen is in. He's not a simple foreigner who barely speaks the language, but a pre-contact alien dropped into this modern world - the scale of the culture clash in his head makes him utterly vulnerable to anyone who wants to use him. In any way.

"He only knows our neighbourhood and the university." Jared mumbles, his worry more despair than hope at this point. He checked the uni, because who knows, Jensen may have caught on that there was an event there today, may have asked the AI to read Jared's schedule, but no luck. Only a bunch of people who were laughing at the sight of him running around in his formal hours after graduation ended. Who the fuck cares though, none of that matters. If Jen is hurt, nothing does.

"Come on, man, think! There must be a place he could have recognised, like a club or something, I don't know where you go on dates…"

Jared's senses shut down for a second and his mouth drops open to gasp.

High Park!

They always go to High Park for dates, and he pays for the monorail every time so that Jensen can see the river, the water cascading down below…

Oh God, maybe he went there? Asked someone to help when the city overwhelmed him and hid in his sanctuary, the only green spot in this massive forest of stone and plastic. Is that possible? Yes. Yes, this must have been it, and he can't come back now, too few credits on his card to get a ride back from the cliff. He must be huddling in a tree, waiting for night to fall and for all the visitors to leave. Did he take the temperature regulator coat? What if he didn't? God, does he have any food?

Did his sickness get worse?

"I have an idea." Jared says and takes off with a fresh spur of determination. Another twenty minutes on the high of this hovercoaster ride of emotions.

* * *

High Park is on top of the mountain just outside of Altstadt's borders. Beyond that, buildings are smaller, streets brighter, and the city gradually eases down into the ten-storey houses commuters live in. It wouldn't be too bad to live there, Jared reckons, but the amount of credits he would have to spend on travel wouldn't be worth the respite from the downtown buzz. The streets are just as bare there as they are in Altstadt. Jen wouldn't be any closer to the environment he's used to.

Jared did his best to give him access to green areas. Every Saturday, like clockwork, they would head out to the Northern Viewpoint at dawn and watch the sunrise there until the crowds trying to escape the city's suffocating grip chased them away. Jensen never said it wasn't enough. He always burrowed close and made that quiet, murmuring sound he used as an endearment, a bird's nickname on his planet, and Jared felt so lucky each time, like his world finally made sense.

It's not daybreak, though, but the exact opposite, and there's only one place in the park where Jensen would have gone to hide at this time. The Munro field.

The meadow is a sea of fallen starlight tonight, it's the sky of better places spread out at their feet. Myriads of glowing pearls sit scattered in the grass, the fruit of a plant that grows on barren volcanos, a pioneer of life. A miracle. But Jensen didn't look at it first, when Jared shared this wonder with him months ago. He stared up at the empty black blanket of air above them and sighed, breath shaky and eyes dry. He sunk the hooks of a single finger into Jared's hand as if to check the world was real and tangible.

"Where are the moons, Jay?” He whispered, barely loud enough for the breeze to carry.

Jared kissed his shoulder, the one spot that poked out between two rigid feathers, but the muscles didn't relax. "New Earth doesn’t have any.”

Jensen didn't blink, his eyes roamed and searched for light - but it was on the ground, not in the morose grey clouds, and he couldn't cope with the loss of hope up there.

„When I look up and see this bare sky, I fear. How will the Sun rise tomorrow if no one grieves her back to life?” He confessed, and the conviction in the words was upsetting. He wasn't able to let his gods go back then, and he probably still speaks to them now, in the secret of his mind. Will they ever leave him alone? „I know you say it isn’t how the world works. I know you must be right. I just." He looked down. "I fear.”

Jared can hear that voice calling from the shadows as the wind rustles the grass from the sparse treeline to the edge of the cliff. He wades through spindles of fairy lights like a man possessed by that illusion, but nothing neon moves, and the weight of fingers doesn't latch onto his hand. The beautiful meadow stays tranquil and empty. His comm calls Jensen's again, another futile attempt. _Why doesn't the pendant work?_ He thinks, suddenly, a sob in his throat. The only way for it to fail if someone took it apart, smashed it until it fell into pieces. If Jen's not here - and he's not, God, he's not - then what if…

"Where did he go?" Jared mumbles and the tight glass of dread in his chest breaks. Its shards pierce him from the inside, and he wheezes, thinks he's going to die. His arms go numb and the tunnel of his vision narrows, the black edges threaten to engulf the entire world. He plops down on the cold, hard ground before he passes out. Flashes of an approaching forest and the horrible sound of bones breaking take over his mind. It's not the first time. He knows it's his PTSD, but knowledge isn't always power. He can't control the deluge of overwhelming feelings triggered inside him.

"Jared, man, I'm so sorry. If I had known…" Mike crouches next to him and rubs his back, helps him hold his head between his knees to calm down. "I'm calling your brother, okay?"

* * *

Mike flees as soon as Jeff reaches the meadow. Jared doesn't blame him. He's all but a stranger to Jensen, one generic face out of a long row of neighbours. It was nice of him to stick around at all, even if it was motivated by guilt. No one should feel responsible for this disaster but Jared.

"Did you tell Mom?" Jeff asks, one hand on Jared's back, waiting for him to rake himself together as they walk back to the monorail.

It's not happening though. Jared feels like shit, because his mind keeps whirling around the fact that he _knew_ Jensen's auditory skills were always worse in the morning, but they shouldn't have been this bad. It's probably tied to his species - they haven't done a sleep test yet, but it was foolish of Jared to assume Jen's ears work all the time, like human hearing does. What if that part of his brain switches off sometimes during sleep? Or… Shit, what if this is how a brain fog manifests in his species? Is that why he didn't understand, because he couldn't hear it at all?

"Jared, did you tell her?"

"Just said I couldn't make it." Jared mutters, watching a flock of purple merle birds as they pick glowing cherries out of the grass. Their throats light up as the fruits tumble down into their plump stomachs. He's hit by the phantom taste of the eyeball fruit, a flashback memory of it. He has been working on a recipe to imitate it, a little surprise for Jensen to take some of his inconsolable homesickness away. But it's too late now.

"You have to man up one of these days and talk it out with her. You can't expect her to be understanding when she doesn't know the full story." Jeff says, referring to the rocky start Jensen had with Jared's mom. He was way too foreign for her approval. "I'm serious."

"Whatever."

"She thinks you’re dating some fashion butterfly.”

„I know, it’s ridiculous.” Jared sighs. He didn't expect that some illegal footage of Saxet-d on the Cloud would spark such an outrageous fashion trend of feathers. „We saw a guy with actual feather implants the other day. Jen was so confused.” He chuckles, showing the barest hint of a smile, but it's gone as soon as it came. "He must be so scared."

Jeff sniffs. It's his tell - he's uncomfortable. “Maybe we should have left him on his planet.”

"Don't say that." Jared snaps.

"But what if -"

"Don't."

Jeff heaves a heavy sigh. For a few minutes, only the sounds of their footsteps break the silence, slip-thuds on damp foliage. There's a bitter, panicky sensation in Jared's mouth whenever he can't resist thinking of what this walk reminds him of. Everything that made this park perfect for his dates with Jensen turns it into hell now, in his absence. Where could he be?

"How's the bedroom situation?" Jeff asks out of the blue, casual as can be. Jared’s face is burning.

"Jeff…"

He knows it’s ridiculous at this age, he sounds like a prude from the last century, but he has never been comfortable talking about this explicitly with anyone. He always figured when it came down to it, he and his partner would understand each other, that instincts and implicit communication would take care of it. Jensen turned that theory upside down, but it still ties Jared's stomach into an iron knot when he has to explain again that hooks don't feel pleasurable anywhere on his body. He feels shy about saying these things out loud.

His brother gives him a curious look. „You still haven’t –”

„No.” Jared interrupts, gritting his teeth. He just can't get around the mental block that tells him Jensen can't consent fully, that he's not educated on it enough. He wants to wait until Jensen's final gender settles. “But… You know, it’s not like I’m not having sex with him. We just don’t go all the way. It's enough.”

“Does he know that?”

“What?”

“That you don't need more." The monorail comes into sight, and Jared quickens his step to get away from this unbearable awkwardness. What the hell does sex matter anyway? Jeff doesn't let it go though.

"You must have heard that Cardassians don't call it sex until someone's bleeding." He nudges Jared's arm. "He might think of it differently."

"I think we're fine." Jared replies, then glances at his brother and groans. "Don't give me that look. You know I hate talking about this." Sex talk is quite open these days, especially since you can share your toy data on the Cloud, but he can't, he _can't. _The topic makes his veins squirm in his body, even with Jensen. "We're good. He says I'm his mate."

"What does that mean?"

"It's the equivalent of boyfriend, I guess."

"You sure?" Well, what else could it be? It's more than a casual affair, but less than marriage. He knows these exist in Jensen's culture too. "Jared, do you even know if it means lifetime commitment or not?"

"I… We had bigger problems to deal with okay?" He splutters indignantly. "He's been happy with the stuff we were doing."

"Apparently not, because he ran away!" Jeff counters. He looks horrified in the ringing silence that follows. "I'm sorry."

"No, no, you're right." Jared rubs the corners of his tired eyes, unsurprised to find moisture there again. He wishes this goddamn mountain top was accessible by car, then he wouldn't have realised he fucked up in yet another way. He tries not to dry-sob as they step into the carriage. It's thankfully empty. "God, do you think…? He's been talking nonstop about children, but maybe he just thinks we should… consummate or something? Did I misunderstand?"

The lights of this ant-castle of a city seem to agree with him, going blurry and too bright even though the pollution filters should have kept them dim. It's like everything Jared constructed in his head in the last five months crumbles down.

"You can't know everything." Jeff tries. But not knowing everything is different to knowing nothing at all. The pressure keeps rising and Jared can't hold it all up by himself.

"We have to consider the possibility that he went down." Jeff clears his throat, probably long since regretting that he brought this up. It failed to get Jared distracted from the crushing fear of this day. "Perhaps the PO picked him up."

It's possible. Jensen doesn't look anything like the sickly beggars limping up from the Dumps, the Purity Order could have noticed him in the Precariat easily. They like to help young immigrants with food and shelter until they can stand on their own feet - the success stories published on the Cloud could touch even the coldest hearts. Jared doesn't like their cultist attitude towards virginity, how they try to convert people to their religion, but he knows Jensen will be the last person who's in danger of suddenly becoming a devout puritan. He will donate all his money to the Seed Sanctuary if their priests took Jensen in. Every single credit.

* * *

* * *

The bed Orisha offers him is small enough that Jensen wonders if there's a hatchling in the house. He feels sorry for it. This isn't a place for children - only undead spirits wandering the streets to wreak havoc could like something this sinister. Was it the child's health that she prayed for? Where is it now? Did Orisha's mate take it away?

Jared told him about _divorces._ How they are only for the sake of law and convenience, not for the serenity of the people involved. In Jensen's culture, a mateship's end is treated as any other death, a journey concluded by Sacrifice. Giving something precious up, the mates sever their bond by cutting their stones off and casting them into fire. Hatchlings don't have a choice. Whoever makes the biggest sacrifice, gets the children, it's the gods' decision. That is the way things have been since the Great Split when the Sun gave up on the treasures earth and water had to offer to escape Quetzalitzli's darkness. It isn't right to let mortal interests break this eternal rule. If Orisha's mate did, the gods' punishment will be severe.

Jensen remembers that Jared confessed to him, quincenas ago, that he wants a family one day. Children. It was such a bittersweet day - the first time they rubbed noses, which was Jensen's first ever, and also the moment when he realized he can't make all the wishes of this precious human come true. Even now, with a second chance given by human medicine, he lets his eggs go to waste. He's a faulty mate. Is it enough reason for Jared to get a _divorce?_

"What do human gods think?" Jensen mumbles, not quite aware why he said it out loud. There's no one here to understand. No one to hear. The gods must be angry at him for his pitiful Tlamictizque, and this is how he has to atone. The only person who will ever speak his tongue with him is Jared, and this saddens him greatly. Altepetl seems like a dream every wakeful moment crushes further into fog. How is he going to remember the details for the rest of his life? Is he going to see a day when he forgets the sounds of his home? That will be the day he dies.

The blanket falls over his shoulder in heavy folds, covered by embroidered, smiling white spots with carrot noses, but it doesn't make heat like the ones Jared has home. It needs Jensen's warmth to heat up, but as shivers run funeral-dances on his spine, Jensen realizes that he doesn't have much of that to give. He's too sick, and his mind is too slow to think of why. Sometimes, he doesn't hear what Orisha's telling him. He can see her lips move, but the sounds come all jumbled and the meaning of the simplest words become smoke, thick as the smell of the last embers in a bonfire. But the worst is when they are clear as moons-hair grass, sound like home and mother, and Jensen knows what he hears isn't reality.

"You look like a corpse." Orisha crouches before him and touches his forehead with the back of her hand. Jensen is too tired to flinch away from the unwanted intimacy, but it disappears quickly enough. She hisses. "Ice."

"Sorry." Jensen sniffs. He knows his eyes are unusual and scary. People never liked to hold his gaze except for his friends in the Pebble House, Tlatoani and Jared. His Jared.

"If you got the perivit plague, I'll kill you myself." She says and marches out of the room. This is the first time Jensen hears the word _plague, _but he doesn't think it bodes well. Perhaps it's a swear word, like _mixer. _He and Jared hear that often enough that Jensen began feeling self-conscious about it._ Perivit_ is the funny name the robot by the monorail calls himself to the visitors who demand too much from his system. Does she hate bots so much that she would be angry if Jensen had one?

"Here. Tito says they used this on their horses when they reached the permafrost." Orisha comes back with a balm in hand. It's pink and looks like_ jello, _which is Jared's favourite treat for _sleep-in days, _but the stink is so awful Jensen bets even Cipatli would gag upon smelling it. "Don't get this crap on my sheets."

She rubs the cream all over Jensen's face, and while he's still spluttering from shock, she presses the loosening button on his shirt and smacks a sticky handful over his chest too. It's too much, her touch uncalled for, and Jensen grabs her wrist and bares his teeth in fear and irritation. His feathers, defying the lethargy of his sickness, flare into spikes, and it hurts, pulls at the skin of his inflamed neck. His reaction makes Orisha stop for a beat, then, annoyingly, she laughs.

"Oh, I'm scared." She scoffs and pulls away with a wave of her sticky hand. "Little pet."

"No pet." Jensen fumes, but she doesn't hear it, doesn't care for what he has to say. Why does she even put up with him? The question makes Jensen suspicious. Does she know she could trade with his feathers?

He curls further in on himself, trying to hide the fluff around his neck even if it's futile. The balm stings his skin and grows hot as dry sand in sunshine, covering him, suffocating. Jensen's chest feels wet and scraped raw at the same time, and he wonders if this is a poison or a cure. Is it going to make his spots disappear? He often hopes one of these human ailments will, perhaps as a side-effect. Would Jared want his body more then? It wouldn't be as different as it is now.

His eyes close to avoid the stench, and he knows he should stay alert to protect his body parts from the greed surrounding him, but it's not more than a blink and he falls asleep.

He feels better when he wakes up, although his joints still ache and the dryness in his eyes tells him she didn't let him rest much. He has all his feathers and none of his fingers are missing, so he doesn't complain about it. The jello-ailment didn't hurt him, just brought some of the warmth back and left his skin sticky. It's fine. Every flower-turn spent safely in one place is one step closer to Jared, he assures himself. He needs to keep it up so that Jared could find him. How far could he be?

"The Horologist called." Orisha says from behind a shoulder-height screen decorated by painted flowers, and Jensen sees her yellow dress draped on the wide central bed next to his cot. "I don't trust you, so up you get, we're leaving."

So much for waiting for Jared here. With a miserable pout, Jensen complies, stands on legs that feel heavy as gold and stiff like the Divider Spear Quetzalitzli uses to kill the Sun each day. Maybe it's the first sign that Jensen's sickness is deadly too. No wonder his feathers are bristling from his discomfort. How would Jared hold a proper funeral for him this way? Would he even know? The thought makes Jensen's jaw tighten. He must not go on the Way until he's sure Jared would hear about it.

"Are you listening?" Orisha walks up to him, her curves hidden by thick black clothes and a hood. She's wearing boots like Jared had for _Survival Training, _and the only spot of bright colour on her body is the red handprint glowing on the front of her mask, just above her mouth. She resembles the ash-demons Cipatli scrapes off from the Sun's fire to guard his nest. "You gotta use a breather or you won't see another year."

"Breather." Jensen repeats dumbly, but lets her secure a similar hood-and-mask cloth around his head. It's warm and soft, holding a peculiar smell that he connects with Jared's collection of very old things. Is she a collector too? This piece is nice enough, even though it doesn't match his feathers. The material that covers his face makes it hard to draw air in, but he suspects it helps ward off the sickness festering on the streets outside. He's grateful for her help.

"Let's go." She nods.

* * *

The streets they breeze through are quiet and shadowy, the people moving between bundles of sleeping beggars forlorn. Jensen thinks it must be a flower-turn before dawn, as the break of a new day, the rebirth of the Sun is the only time the world falls into stupor. Life finds the rhythm for its dance, even in this formidable darkness and misery. But it's no consolation. Jensen's been kept in gold and treasures ever since he cracked his shell, and this poverty wounds him. No one deserves to rot away in this living grave, this mountain-city where the Sun never reaches the earth. How could he return to Jared's home and be happy after this? He would never forget he's living on the suffering of others.

"What is the Horologist?" Jensen asks, pressing into Orisha's side, can't help it. Jared always holds his hand whenever they go out, and the lack of contact is a void he can't ignore. He feels vulnerable.

"A Dalorese bastard who makes our bombs." She replies, shouldering him away. At least she's careful about it this time. "He was a freelancer until Tito saved him from the Order."

Free until saved. Then what? Slave? And who's Tito? "He doesn't like order?"

"The Purity Order, pet." Orisha corrects him. She sounds amused. "He blew up one of their brothels."

Jensen has a hard time comprehending anything she says, but he doesn't want to ask dumb questions all the time. He doesn't know half of her words, and it makes him disappointed. He wonders how much of Jared he can't see because he doesn't understand. "I hate the Purity Order."

She chuckles. "They play the upstairs folks quite nicely, I have to give them that. Charity organisation, right. Pet recyclers. Who would guess they own every whore down from the Precariat?"

"Recyclers?"

"They put pretty ones like you back on sale as untouched runaways. You have no idea how much fat cats pay for an exotic toy if they believe they can be the first to ruin it. Bots just don't cut it anymore, as you can see."

She gestures at a group of abandoned robots, and they scatter. Most of them flatten their rickety parts to the brick wall behind them, but some jump into the fetid water pooling in the basement of a building. It's repelling and sad.

Jensen's sensitive nose causes him so much pain here, it's a training in self-control not to give into nausea. He yearns for Jared's home, the fragrant scent of the room and the savour of Jared's skin, how different it tastes and smells compared to the metallic edge his own people have. He also misses their bed and the safety of his nest. The cold of his sickness is awful, and he gets tired too easily, even though his limbs are usually stronger in this Other World than they were back home. Jared says it's because the magical bond connecting the earth to people that humans call _gravity _is different here, but Jensen thinks it's actually the better eating choices. He started to thicken in a good way, now that he can choose whatever he wants from the list of dishes Alicia helped them put together, and he's building real muscles like a hunter.

But today all his energy seems to be gone. He's sick as a featherless priest, or maybe this is his body changing once and for all. The ache in his neck throbs. He's sad, but relieved at the same time, because whatever happens, the weight of indecision doesn't pull him down anymore. He presses a palm to his stomach and asks the Moons to mourn the eggs he will never have.

As Orisha guides them along, they pass by a robot on its knees, giving its mouth to a four-eyed creature that holds one of those strange feeding bottles in his right hand. With the other, the man-monster grabs the robot's tattered hair and moves it violently in the directions he wants. Orisha doesn't react at all, as if the scene was common around here, but Jensen shudders and looks away in disgust.

He knows that many creatures like to give pleasure with their mouths. He knows about _blowjobs_ too because Chad taught him, showed him human mating videos and said Jared should never hear about it. So Jensen kept it secret that he knows more human mating practices than the small things they sometimes do. He knows even humans take more mates sometimes, and he wonders if he should have told Jared that he knew he was holding back. Would it have changed anything? But it was too difficult, because Jensen doesn't understand the reason why Jared draws back at times, and he didn't want to end up being humiliated. He just wants their mateship to be satisfactory for both of them, even if their options to have hatchlings is limited.

The first time he tried a _blowjob,_ late at night when Jared was tense from all his troubles and the pain in his head, Jensen held his hand up in the silencing gesture and trailed _kisses_ all the way down to Jared's tepolli even though he couldn't see how that would feel good. But it did. Jared was so surprised and happy, and the nuzzling turned so sweet after, that every beat of confusion was worth it. Jensen was glad he was brave enough to try it. He's done blowjobs a few times since then, but not as many as he would have liked. It's such a calming practice for him, to nurture and to strengthen bonds, but not an act that makes him want, and Jared doesn't always see that it's okay to just give pleasure without receiving. He doesn't let it happen often because he wants Jensen to react to it in a different way.

The sight of the creature and his toy made Jensen appalled though. He doesn't think it should be done hard and dirty. It's an act of love, isn't it? Why do they dishonor it like that? Having sex, he would understand, but this...

"Don't stare at them, damnit." Orisha yanks his arm, and Jensen tries to apologise, but an old man with one eye interrupts him.

_"Vive memor leti". _He whispers from an open doorway. A hole in the wall.

_"Fugit hora." _She replies and pulls Jensen inside before he can even think of resisting.

They go through a corridor of dead bodies behind glass screens, some wrapped in cloth, others dried out and dark brown. The dead doesn't bother Jensen. He received training in the Pebble House to get him used to the sight. But the screens - the glass suggests these dead are here for others to look at them and watch the leftovers from their demise.

"Don't you think it is cruel to keep those souls tied here?" He asks, and his ears don't hear that he used the wrong tongue. He shakes his head to get the sense back.

"- not your Jared, pet."

He catches Orisha's sentence, but there's nothing he can say to that, so he stays quiet and follows the one-eyed man. He has a row of short spikes along his back, poking through the holes made for them in his clothing. Jensen can't decide if it is a sign of disfigurement. At the end of the long hallway, they enter a small, cluttered room with a table in the middle and boxes upon boxes of strange equipment piled on the shelves by the walls. It's a warm place that smells like fire-powder.

Jensen instinctively wants to close the door and keep the pleasant air inside.

"Leave it open!" The old man barks at him, pointing with a gnarled finger. "Keep this in mind, boy, if you wanna stay alive. Never trap a Dalorese."

Orisha rolls her eyes. "Honestly. How did a street skunk like you become a clockmaster?"

"Spare the wind, Orisha. Ain't that many choices in the Dumpster. Did you bring me breakfast?" He eyes Jensen up and down. "Looks overripe."

Orisha groans and takes a head-sized pulsing egg out of her bag. "Here's your damn egg, greedy bastard."

Jensen has to grit his teeth to keep from vomiting when the Horologist puts it in a contraption and peels the tip of the shell open to slurp at its insides.

"Did you get the blueprints?" Orisha asks, scraping a nail on the tabletop in impatience.

He nods and puts a pebble on the table. "Damn near cost me a finger."

"Yours do worth a lot too?" Jensen tries asking, not entirely sure how to say it right. It would surprise him if this man's body parts were just as precious as his, but this Other World can be odd at times. There might be someone who would pay for yellowish teeth.

The guy chuckles and jerks his thumb at him. "What's he on?"

Orisha just shakes her head and pulls the man back towards the table and the hologram-model that pops up there. "So this is it, huh? The mighty Sanctuary." She spins the model around. "Thought it would look more… extravagant."

"Jared took me to the Sanc-tuary once." Jensen chimes in, feeling much more talkative now that he's warm and hidden from the street. "That is not a correct drawing."

The silence he earns is so deafening he worries for a beat that his hearing went away for good.

Then the Horologist huffs. "What?"

"The Sanc-tuary has a circle in the middle. I looked with my night eye and there is stone under. It holds the seed building on the ground."

"Knew it." Orisha mutters under her breath and pushes a flat tablet with a pen-thing towards Jensen. "Can you draw it for us?"

"I can build it too." He beams. While Jared was writing his dissertation, he learnt how to use art programmes, because he always liked painting, but Jared said real paint was rare and too expensive at the time. He gifted Jensen with a _craft-tablet_ instead.

The Horologist stares. "Where the fuck did you find this guy?"

Orisha looks smug. "My secret."

They let him watch the news in a corner after he's done while they inspect the model. He tries to think of a way to contact Jared through the _hologram feed,_ but his thoughts become stone in his head when the footage changes into a scene he never imagined he would see in his life. The person on the screen is the man in his nightmares, the one whose face he sees behind his eyelids when he wakes up wheezing. Miquitzli.

The humans dressed like Jared when they first met present a gift to him to try talking. He's sitting on the throne where He used to, Giver of Things, and Jensen feels an odd tinge of satisfaction, because he knows things have changed then. But his fear kills that emotion and leaves him feeling small, a boy hiding behind his brother from a beast with spikes for a mane. He bites the back of his hand. The pain distracts him from the unpleasant things about to come. It's not a good habit, but it always calms him when something makes his heart seize. He can't comprehend what this picture is. A vision into the world he died in? A bad dream?

"Scared?" The Horologist grips his shoulders and makes him jump. His stiffening feathers almost catch the man's withdrawing arms. "Don't be. We're all the same here." He grins. "And God will help us."

"The guy left this place ages ago." Orisha says, and pulls Jensen out of the man's clutches. She's gentle this time, as though she has given up on keeping him away with hostility. _"Memor leti_, skunk."

The Horologist looks disappointed, but they are leaving, and Jensen doesn't have time to ask anything about the god some humans recognise. He would like to know why he left. Is it possible that his gods left too? He's left shaken, mind turning back to Miquitzli and his throne, and the humans walking on Altepetl's land. What if Jared is right and this Other World truly exists alongside his own?

* * *

Back in Orisha's home, Jensen is just about to exit the bathroom when he spots an unknown man sitting at the shabby kitchen table across from him. It's daytime now, but the darkness persists, and the weak lamplight soaks the room in shades of orange. The man seems comfortable in gloom. He has short, russet hair and a harsh jawline peppered by stubble, a warrior's face compared to Orisha's mild features. There's a scar running from his nose to his thin lips, but it looks old, a normal part of him now. He's wearing a grey poncho, folded back on one side to reveal a working phaser, and Jensen's heart beats double from the familiarity of it. This is the first time he sees anyone dressed like a nobleman would be in Altepetl.

Orisha's perched sideways on the man's thighs, running her fingers over his wiry torso, along his ribs until the stranger grunts in discomfort and stops her. They are exchanging soft words, and his pale hand cups her cheek, looks cold on her brown skin despite the affection in the gesture. He plays with a coil of her hair and whispers, _not much longer now, I can feel it. _His voice sounds different, like the rough bark of a tree. It doesn't have the playful rhythm Jared's words usually carry, but feels measured and slow. She buries her face in his neck and he hugs her close, hooking his chin over her shoulder with his eyes closed for a moment. When they open again, they land directly on Jensen and sharpen. They are blue, but nothing like Chad's sunny-sky gaze, they seem steel-hard and ruthless.

"Are we adopting strays now?" He asks, still in that wary, almost emotionless tone.

Orisha flings herself out of the man's lap as if it burnt and wipes at her left eye, clearing her throat. "His name's Jensen."

The man looks Jensen up and down, lingering on his feathers instead of his lips, unlike most of the other humans Jensen met before. There's recognition in his unwavering gaze. "Pet?"

She shakes her head. "Doesn't seem like it. He was able to run away from the collectors."

He looks impressed. "Come here."

Jensen does not.

"I don't bite." The man smiles with too much teeth, but he looks exactly like that's his favourite pastime. He pulls a black glove on as Jensen pads closer, only using it on one hand. Jensen chews on his own wrist as the stranger reaches up and grabs his face to bend him down and examine him.

"Don't touch his fluids." Orisha frets.

"What difference would it make?" Her mate dismisses her concern without even sparing a look for her, cold as marble. All his attention is on Jensen alone. There’s something old in him, an ancient knowledge in the way he carries himself, and a depth that only those who are on the edge of their Tlamictizque understand. Jensen has been there, he knows the fear and the weight of resignation, the agony. He wants to comply because he feels like this man deserves it.

"Head-bashing isn't the Order's style." The stranger mutters in contemplation. "Do you have blue blood, Jensen?"

"Yes."

"There's some dried blood and a contusion on his scalp, but I can't find the gash. RA?" Jensen hears him whisper, but he doesn't understand the words _contusion, scalp _and _gash, _so he can't do anything but wait for further explanation. They must be speaking of his healing saliva, because Alicia sometimes calls it RA component. _Regeneration Accelerator._ "Get the stapler."

"What you are doing?" Jensen asks, messing up his sentence in his sudden spike of fear. They are using too many words he hasn't heard before and it makes him want to thrash, but the man holds him tight.

"It's all right. You'll feel better in a second." He tells Jensen. "Close your eyes."

"No! Wait!" Jensen yelps, thinking of tattoos he didn't want and body parts he wanted to keep. He would rather fail his circle again than let them take more. "Tell me, please tell and I will not move."

"We're making this -" The man touches the bump on his head, his horn. He's patient but doesn't have any mercy in his voice. "- go away. You'll only feel a sting."

"I don't need." Jensen gasps, ready to risk breaking his neck to twist free. Jared told him he shouldn't tell this to anyone because people would want his saliva, but he's more afraid of them doing things to his body he can't understand than that. "I can heal myself."

Orisha sucks a sharp breath in, but the man cuts her off before she could speak.

"No." He says with an edge in his voice. "My decision is final." He lets Jensen go. "Is that why the boy's here?"

She shakes her head. Her eyes are fuming. "He came from Altstadt."

The man stays emotionless and detached, even though he turns back to Jensen and hums. "A long way from home."

Jensen holds his gaze to prove that his bravery is worthy of this warrior's respect. Like Tlatoani taught him. "I want to go back."

"Don't we all?" The man's lips curve into a wistful smile, but his eyes look vicious instead of sad. They are rolling in vengeance, not regret. He doesn't seem to be talking of Altstadt. "Come with me and I'll help you."

Jensen considers it. He doesn't have any options - Orisha will not let him stay for long and she only tolerates him until then, but this other human… He seems like someone Jensen could trust. Someone he could admire.

"Who are you?" He asks, a tingling sensation in his chest. If he imagines that this is the second circle of life for those who didn't pass the way they were supposed to, could it be…?

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is welcome and appreciated.


End file.
